the low road
by that-treason
Summary: Damon decides that Elena can choose for herself - so they team up to find the Cure. AU from the end of 4x17, with a re-write of 4x18. Damon/Elena and Rebekah along for the ride. Mature rating for bad language, vampire violence, and references to switched-off sexy times.
1. the low road

_Written for this wonderful prompt from upupa_epops on livejournal: "Damon/Elena, AU from 4x17. When Elena reaches to steal Katherine's addresses, Damon impulsively decides to screw the high road and team up with Elena instead."_

_Once I read the prompt I could not stop thinking about how it would all work and I had to write this out. The finished product ended up much more spare and spartan than I expected - and very dialogue-y. But I kinda think I like it this way, rather than more detailed and filled out. YMMV. _

**[ the low road (part one): the low road ]**

"I've never done it on a rooftop before." Elena looks to the side, all coy, but then she smiles up at him.

Damon's eyes flare and he leans in without a second thought, before he stops himself, and pulls back. It takes all his concentration to bring his eyes up from her lips so he can talk.

"You're not missing much."

But Elena just rolls her eyes at him, sees through his transparent deflection. "You don't have to take the high road, Damon." She pulls on his jacket to bring him closer and now it's her eyes on his lips. He is made of confusion. Her presence overwhelms him - the smell of her hair and the tug of her hands on his jacket, hands so close. Restraint has him on fire.

"I'm not sired to you anymore. I want this. You want this," Elena whispers.

And then he can't help himself: he's falling into her. He's waited so long for everything to be right and real, and now he aches for just the slightest taste, even an echo of what they'd had. His lips find hers, and he's lost. Her arms go up to wrap around his neck, so she can pull herself up to him and balance their heights. But then one of her hands is running down his side, while the other holds the almost empty bottle and...

Damon's not so gone he can't catch her. Not so gone he can't push her off him and away from the pockets of his jeans. Elena's face reveals real-enough-seeming shock - but who can tell anymore?

When she says "What?" at him she's indignation head-to-toe. He pulls the paper from his pocket and waves it in her face.

"Looking for that? Did you really think that was gonna work, the sex, the temptation, the booze? What, are you kidding me? I invented that trick." Damon pulls the bottle from her and she stumbles a little, but he stares out over the city and doesn't even glance her way. Instead he swallows down brown liquor straight from the bottle. It's cheap and it offends him, but it gets the job done.

"I pulled the exact same shit right here on this roof, with Lexi. I wore her out, kept at her till she fell asleep in my arms. Downright adorable." He glances at her and takes another swig from the bottle. Elena's listening intently, but he can't tell what the look on her face might mean. "Spent the rest of the night reinforcing that door over there - real quiet like. And when the sun came up and she ran for the door, she was stuck up here with no other exit. Just had to huddle in the doorframe all day waiting for dark." His eyes go wide when he turns to her and says, "I played her - and I did it all as payment for those six months of misery that she forced on me."

He sighs. "She went back to Mystic Falls and Stefan. Told him all about how irredeemable I'd become. Finally left me in peace."

Elena shrugs her shoulders, but he can hear the irritation in her voice. "So you pretended to have feelings for her just to get her off your back?" she says.

"I was willing to do whatever it took," he says, eyebrows arching. "Sound familiar?"

Elena's face is all fake grin and fake sweetness. "Aw. I hurt your feelings. Once upon a time you told me you didn't have any feelings, remember?"

"Not _my_ feelings," he says, "I'm looking out for you because one day, you will flip that switch back on, and all the bad stuff that you did is gonna come rushing back, and it is going to suck."

"So you're saying that you felt bad for Lexi?" Elena's voice drips sarcasm onto the pavement.

"She became a walking, talking reminder of all the awful things I'd done. And I managed to avoid her for decades, and then she just shows up in Mystic Falls to wish my baby bro a happy birthday, and _boom_ - rush of memories...rush of guilt." Just remembering her now makes his chest ache in uncomfortable ways. Regret is a sensation he tries to avoid at all costs (just _too many_ and _too much_), but some things even he can't shut down and ignore.

"So you kill her?"

"Out of sight, out of mind," he says. "So understand: Every day that you're like this is the day that you might do the one thing that you can't take back."

"Here's what I don't get." Her voice is empty when she lays it out for him, and his eyes fall away. He looks out at the city, because he can't look at her.

"You spent six months trying to get her to fall in love with you just so that you could hurt her. You were spiteful, malicious, borderline evil, and you say that you had your emotions turned off, but those all sound like emotions to me."

Damon shakes his head, might be in denial, might be to prove his point - he's losing the thread of this conversation and he doesn't know what he thinks or feels anymore. "Maybe they were. Maybe hatred was the first one I got back," he says. "All the more reason to Cure you. That way, we get the normal Elena back without aaaall the ugly stages in between."

"I'm not taking the Cure, Damon," she says as she steps away from him, across the roof.

He rushes in front of her, bottle dropped and broken behind him, and tries to speak, tries to cut her off, but she doesn't let him. Elena's voice overrules him and he gives in.

"This is who I am now." She hits out at him with the palms of her hands, landing solidly on his jacket. "All this talk about guilt and...and..and memory. Why do you get to decide? Why are my emotions, _my guilt_, somehow your responsibility?"

Damon freezes. Her words turn over and over in his head. The sounds of the city fade away and all he can hear is his own voice inside his head.

("_My actions, what I do, it's not your fault. I own them. They belong to me. You are not allowed to feel my guilt."_)

"I'll give you that." The words come from his mouth slowly - like everyone of them costs him. "Alright."

"Alright?" Elena quirks her head, obviously puzzled. "Is this some new plan? Just agree with me till we get the Cure and then snatch it from me?"

"Nope. This one's real. You...you reminded me of something, something I said to Stefan once. Looong time ago, before I started spending all my time chasing after teenaged girls that didn't want me." Damon looks right into her uncaring brown eyes and says, "You're right, much as it pains me to admit it." His hands come up to circle her wrists, still locked in place on the front of his jacket. He pulls them down and holds them lightly in between Elena and himself. "My guilt is my guilt, and your guilt is yours. Fair enough." His voice is soft and barely carries over the breeze.

She squints at him, then turns away, dropping his hands - obviously thrown off by his change of heart. He can see her deciding something in her head.

"How do I know I can trust you. How do I know you won't just play along and then shove the Cure down my throat as soon as it's convenient?"

"You want trust?" He grabs her right hand, flips it over, and slams the folded paper down into it. Elena jumps a little, surprised in spite of herself. "How 'bout this: that one big clue to finding Katherine? You can have it." The paper stays behind in her hand, while both of his go to cup her face. He looks her dead in the eyes and she _can't_ look anywhere else. "But I have one question for you: I don't want to take the Cure and you don't want to take the Cure, so why are you still looking for it?"

"Does this mean I don't get to snap his neck?"

Damon's boots scrape the concrete of the roof as he spins around to face Rebekah. "Bex. Lovely." He rolls his eyes with his entire face and turns back to Elena. "Did you two have an actual genuine plan? A plan that involved yet another instance of _my_ _neck being snapped, Elena_?"

"Could be," Elena says and shrugs. "You were in the way."

"Perfect," he remarks. "That still in the cards at the moment?"

"Not if you've really decided to be useful, instead of remaining difficult." Her voice is ruthless, but her eyes are flat.

"Tch" is all he can say, with a shake of his head.

"You asked what I...what _we,_" she nods at Rebekah, partner in crime, "want with it. I want the Cure gone and out of my life. Rebekah wants to take it and make a million babies with some perfect man of her dreams. We have a mutually beneficial goal between the two of us. You still interested in helping?"

He leans in, face in her face, but never touches her. He's so close he can feel her breath on his skin, the breath she still forgets she doesn't need, and he can smell the scent of liquor and leather climbing off of both of them. "I'm in this for you. It's always been you. Vampire, human, whatever - _I want you_. So, yeah, I'll help you get what you want - and in exchange, you do one simple thing for me."

"Of course there's a catch," Elena says and chuckles. "What do you want, Damon?"

"I want you to turn it back on," he says, catching her chin with his hand when she tries to turn away. "Maybe not right away. Maybe we party and we feed and we fuck across the whole continent, and you take all the time you need. But you promise me that when it's all been enough, you'll turn it back on. _For me_."

Elena just narrows her eyes.

###

"How can you seriously still have nothing but a radio in this car. No hookup for my phone, no place for CDs - you don't even have a tape player in this thing." Rebekah is leaning her whole body from the back seat up towards the radio, trying like mad to change the station. Damon smacks her hands away and she retreats to the back, looking wounded.

"This car is classic. Everything in it is perfect. Stop touching things before you break something."

Elena ignores them both in favor of staring out the window.

They've been driving for hours, away from New York, across northern New Jersey and on into Pennsylvania. Everything went from urban to rural quick enough, and the road wound up and down as they entered the mountains. After hours without stopping, Damon pointed the car south and west, and they left the mountains behind.

The ninth time that Rebekah and Damon fight over the radio, Elena finally interrupts them. "It amazes me how in spite of being so ancient, the two of you still spend most of your time acting like six-year-olds."

That shuts them up for a while. Rebekah crosses her arms in the back of the car. Damon just hums to himself, out of sync with the country song on the radio, and a stupid closed-mouth grin on his face. They pass Harrisburg before anyone speaks again.

"So what's the plan?" Elena asks. "We have these addresses, some of them in the same general area, but you don't honestly believe she's living in one of these towns."

"Now _that_ would be downright silly of her," Damon says, glancing away from the road to look at the fragile-seeming girl in his passenger seat. She's still concentrating on the scenery running past her window.

"And where does that leave us?" Rebekah calls from the back.

"Well," Damon says in a voice so cheerful it makes Elena sigh, "as Elena so rightly pointed out, it's unlikely that she's living in _any_ of the towns on our list. But! If she's going to be checking these PO boxes in any reasonable way, she'd have to be somewhere within a certain distance of them."

Elena's face turns from the window for the first time in hours.

"And if you look," he scoots down on the seat, so he can reach into his pocket to grab his phone - which he promptly chucks at her, "you can see that the most recent addresses are all in a vague circle of each other. So, it's entirely possible that she's nesting somewhere in the middle there."

"Still leaves a lot of places to check, " Rebekah whines.

"But Damon's right," Elena says as she examines the map on his phone, "this might narrow things down significantly. It gives us something like an actual chance." Elena grins at Damon, but it's fake. Damon smiles wide right back at her, but it's snark. Rebekah just sighs and sulks and re-crosses her arms.

"You know I kinda like this threesome-"

"_...not in a threesome with you, Salvatore..." _Rebekah growls under her breath.

"-road trip action we've got going on." He squidges up his lips and bobs his head in time with the radio.

And the miles pass on.

###

It's early afternoon when they reach the first town in their search area. There's a brief argument about the best way to really figure out if Katherine's around, but eventually Elena rubs her temples and cuts off all discussion. They decide to split up, to cover more ground, but they still have no clear method for finding her trail. After two hours with no sign of her, they get back in the car and move on. Rebekah huffs and Damon hums and Elena is silent as the grave.

Four towns later, the sun dips below the horizon and there's still no sign of her. Rebekah is asleep in the backseat, limbs thrown everywhere and face soft. Elena's still off in her own thoughts, staring out the window at darkening fields.

Damon glances down at the gas meter.

"We should probably stop somewhere for the night," he says. "We don't have enough gas to make it all the way there and this far out in the sticks there won't be a station open." He looks over at her, but she doesn't move an inch.

"You ok with sleeping in the car? Any motel we run into around here will be crawling," Damon says, disgust in his voice and on his face.

"It's fine. Whatever needs to happen is fine." Elena's distracted when she talks, definitely doesn't notice his sigh as he pulls the car off the deserted road and onto the gravel shoulder. The ignition clicks when he turns the key, the emergency break pops, and then the low rumble of the car goes silent. It's perfectly dark, with only tiny house lights off in the distance. The pair of them don't move for several minutes. They just sit there and listen to the night sounds and Rebekah's dreamy muttering from the back. Eventually Damon relaxes in his seat and put his hands behind his head.

"Sweetheart, you're awful thinky over there. Care to share?"

"I'm thinking about that 'simple thing' that you want."

"Ah."

He clicks the key back on just enough to power the radio and flips around the dial, finding static and more static, but eventually settles on an old jazzy sounding song. It's near the end of a horn solo, but pretty quick the horn is joined by piano and strings and a happy woman singing along:

_'Twas there that we parted, in yon shady glen_  
_On the steep, steep sides of Ben Lomond_  
_Where in purple hue, the highland hills we view_  
_And the sun coming out in the gloaming._

And then a man's voice joins in, sharing the chorus with her:

_Now you take the high road _  
_And I'll take the low road_  
_And I'll be in Scotland afore ya,_  
_For me and my true love may ne'er meet again,_

"On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond," Damon whispers along.

They listen to the song's big finish and the clapping that's been left on the track. Damon rolls over on his side and gets as comfortable as he can, pillowing his face with both hands on the back of the seat.

"That was Liltin' Miss Tilton - Martha Tilton," he says, when there's silence from the radio. "Saw her sing this at Carnegie with Benny Goodman's band in '38. Perfect voice for the orchestra. She was so good the crowd _screamed_ for an encore and they had to scramble together something because the band had nothing else prepared."

He gives Elena a toothy grin. "She was tasty too."

Elena rolls her eyes, but turns over on the seat towards him and pillows her own face in her own hands. Bright horns and clarinet fall from the radio as the next song starts without any introduction.

"Yesterday you were a punk, today you're all about big band?" she questions him.

"What can I say, I'm a music enthusiast."

A smile more genuine than he's seen in days creeps onto her face, and it thrills him. Damon wants to keep her talking, keep her engaged - and he does for a little while - but soon enough her voice slows and her eyes flutter closed.

It takes all his control not to touch her sleeping face.

###

The sound of the emergency break popping into place wakes Elena. She can't remember falling asleep, but here she is, head fallen over to the side and mouth wide open. Her face is confused when she looks over at Damon whirling the keys around a finger in the driver's seat.

"Why are we stopping?" she asks quietly, turning to look at Rebekah in the back seat.

"Next town on the list," he drawls. "You looked so peaceful, with the little bit of drool on your cheek, I figured I'd just get us here before waking you up."

The talking from the front wakes Rebekah with a start. "Nik!" she yells and sits up fast enough to bang her head on the roof. They turn around to look at her while she rubs her head from instinct more than pain. Damon's eyebrows are shot up into his hairline and Elena's early morning scowl is deepened.

"Sweet dreams about the incestuous love of your life?" Damon asks before ducking out the driver's side door to dodge Rebekah's wild punch. Elena follows him out of the car, but turns back to pop the seat forward so Rebekah can get out. The morning air is cool on her skin, helps to wake her even further - thoughts drifting immediately to that ever-present need. She wanders a few feet away as Damon and Rebekah finish their first squabble of the day and eventually start to discuss the best places to search.

"You coming?" Damon calls to her.

"I need a minute. I'm hungry."

"This isn't a pub crawl, Elena!" Rebekah stomps her foot and her arms go back to crossed. "I want the Cure, Katherine has it. We don't stop until we find her." Damon idly wonders if she'll get stuck that way someday, since she spends so much of her time with her arms folded up like that. Elena doesn't even bother to look at her, just scans the street for a likely target.

"I said, in a minute," she yells back and walks steadily away from them, towards an auburn-haired girl loading bags into the passenger side of a car. She doesn't notice Elena creep far up into her personal space. The girl jumps back and clutches at her chest when she turns to see Elena so close.

"Oh, my god, you startled me," she says, a smile sneaking onto her face.

"Did I?" Elena says through her own nasty grin.

Even though it's broad daylight veins creep up Elena's face to her eyes and her fangs slide down between her teeth. Damon comes running. She grabs the girl with both hands and pulls her close, angling her so her hair falls away from her neck. Before Elena can even break skin, the girl just calmly speaks into Elena's close-by ear: "Katherine, what are you doing?"

It's the opposite of anything Elena is expecting and she throws herself back, mouth still wide but teeth all human. It's instinct at that point to ask the girl "You know me?" - more out of shock than anything else.

Damon and Rebekah arrive by Elena's side in time for the girl to reply.

"Of course," the girl says, as if it's a silly thing to ask. "And I know most people around here prefer you to feed from the neck, but I asked you to drink from my wrist, remember?" She holds out her arm with her shirt pulled back, revealing neat little healing puncture wounds at her wrist.

Rebekah can't help but say, "I think we just found Katherine."

Damon snorts and says, "The conniving little bitch compelled the whole town." He's visibly impressed.

"What's my full name?" Elena asks.

"Katherine Pierce. I love the new 'do, by the way." The girl is happy to be helpful, seems happy to just be in Elena's presence.

"How do you know Katherine?" Damon asks.

The girl looks at him, nothing but puzzled. "How do I know who?"

"Me," Elena says, drawing the girl's attention away from Damon and back to herself. "How do you know me?"

The girl shrugs and says, "Small town, everybody knows everybody."

"So everyone here knows Katherine?" Rebekah asks her, leaning into the girl's face.

Her smile fades and she does her best to bend away without moving her feet. "I'm sorry, I don't know who you're talking about."

Damon slaps Rebekah across the chest with his the back of his hand when he figures it out. She yelps and hits him back, hard enough to knock him down. "She's compelled them all to forget about her unless she's talking to them herself," he says as he picks himself up off the ground. "It's the perfect hiding spot. No one knows a thing about her, and at the same time she's got a whole town of happy little snacks."

"Clever girl," says Rebekah, who can't hide the fact that she now she's impressed too, in spite of herself.

Elena ignores their discussion and presses on questioning the girl, looking for some slip-up in Katherine's perfect compulsion web.

"How long have we known each other?"

"It's— been a while. I can't remember."

"Where do I live? Where do I work?" Elena's rapid fire with her questions, barely waiting for the girl to answer.

"I don't know." The girl tries to keep up, but the more she has to answer "I don't know" the more flustered she becomes.

"Who do I spend time with? Do I have any friends?"

"Well-you said we could all be friends with you, as long as we kept your secret."

Elena jumps on her answer: "What secret?"

"I—I don't know." The girl's biting her lip and tense now, looking at the ground, unhappy with being unable to answer.

"Let me compel her," Rebekah exclaims. "I'm certain I can get it all out of her faster than this game of twenty questions can."

"No!" Damon yells, but then brings his voice back down, "We can't risk that Katherine hasn't wired them all with some self-destruct command, in case one of them gets caught."

Rebekah starts to respond, but immediately Damon and her are just talking over each other. It's all: "I know I can do this-" and "-this is our best and only lead, I'm not going to let you fuck it up!" round and around.

Elena thinks intently, looking at the ground while they argue behind her.

"I don't live with you?" she asks the girl.

"No," she replies.

"Do I visit you at your house?"

"Well, you haven't been by in a while, so I was sortof expecting you some time soon." The girl shifts her head to the side, thinking. "Although not so early in the day as this. I know I already bought cookies and juice for afterwards."

This is enough to stop Damon and Rebekah dead in their arguing tracks.

"Cookies and juice?" Elena asks.

"Afterwards?" Damon and Rebekah say in unison.

"For after - after you feed. So I'm not so woozy."

"Can I go home with you now? I know it's early, but I feel like spending time with you right now. Would that be ok?"

"Sure Katherine," the girl says, full of enthusiasm, "I love it when you visit. I'd love to have you over now."

"Hey, what do I call you?" Elena asks. "What's your name?"

"My full name is Sophia Neres, but you usually just call me Soph."

Rebekah snickers. "She even has pet names picked out for them. Lovely. I wonder where she keeps the treats."

###

After stashing Damon's car in an out-of-the-way alley, they all pile into Sophia's tiny car for the ten minute ride to her house. Elena has to sit in the front seat to constantly remind Sophia what they're doing. There's a point where they almost end up on a highway headed the wrong way out of town - which leaves everyone in the car screaming. Damon sprawls across the back, legs spread wide and right arm along the back seat, obviously infuriating Rebekah. She slams his head into the window twice before they arrive at Sophia's house. Doesn't stop him from calling her names.

Sophia parks in front and gets out, heading right for the door, keys in hand. Elena scrambles to follow, struggling with the unnecessary seat belt she fastened like clockwork at the beginning of the drive. "Soph! Wait up," she calls and zips up to meet her on the porch. Sophia's already got the door unlocked and pushed open.

"Is it alright if I come inside, Soph?" Elena asks, trying to be as mild as she can. Damon and Rebekah catch up to them with a minimum of fuss.

"Of course," Sophia says, puzzled all over again. She goes to enter the house, but Elena grabs her arm to stop her.

"Can my friends come inside?" Elena asks, gesturing to Damon and Rebekah.

"I'm not s-supposed to..." she's having trouble talking, the words are getting stuck in her mouth. "...not supposed to have...people over...except for you, Kath..."

"She seems to have her locked up pretty tight," Damon says. "Has to be a good reason for it. Otherwise this is some pretty insane snack machine security Katherine's enforcing."

"Look," Rebekah says, "we need to get into this house and this girl's invitation is standing in the way. Perhaps she's outlived her usefulness."

"Mmm...I remind you again: she's our only lead. Probably not the best idea to lose her permanently just yet," Damon replies, and then nods his head at Elena. "So, _Katherine_, what do you think?"

Elena turns to Sophia, who's waiting patiently half-in and half-out of her own house and says, "You have a secret that you keep here for me, right?"

Sophia nods, but says nothing else.

"What did I tell you to do if anyone comes her looking for it? You're not supposed to let anyone else in, but what if someone stops by and asks you about it?"

"I'm supposed to wait till they go away and then call you, tell you what happened."

"Well, there's our in," Elena says simply. "Damon, would you care to do the honors?"

"Wait, what 'in'?" Rebekah pleads. "What are we going to do?"

###

"You sure you're clear on your part of the plan, Bex?" Damon whispers from their hiding spot on the side of the house.

"Katherine shows up to check on the girl, I snap Katherine's neck, we take the Cure."

Damon is a ball of exasperation, but he manages to keep his voice down. "Katherine shows up, gets the Cure from the girl, _then_ you snap her neck, and we take the Cure."

"Right, right. And we'll know that she's gotten it because Elena will signal us-"

"-from inside the house, yes. Perfect. Try to keep track in that blond head of yours, ok? Has to be pretty close to go time."

He can tell she wants to hit him, but she's prizing caution over revenge for the time being. Instead they crouch in the bushes and wait. At least half a dozen cars go by over as time goes on. One or two of them slow down near the house, but otherwise none of them are even slightly suspicious.

After an hour of waiting, Damon is antsy and raw. Doesn't want to be outside waiting for Katherine to show. Doesn't want Elena waiting inside where he can't reach her. Certainly doesn't want to be hanging around Blondie Bex the whole while. Impatience is just about crushing him when Katherine runs up to the front door out of nowhere at regular old human speed.

At first he doesn't think it's her, because this is a Katherine he's never seen before. Her curls are up in a high ponytail, pulled entirely away from her face. Where usually there should be 6-inch stiletto heels there are running shoes. Running shoes.

Damon bites his lip bloody to control his shock.

They listen to her knock on the door and ask to come inside. There's no concern in her voice, just a polite chit-chatty tone, like she's in the neighborhood popping by to visit friends in the middle of a run. The door closes behind her and it's silent on the street.

Minutes tick by.

Damon holds his phone in a death grip, waiting for it to buzz with the signal from Elena, but then a huge vase comes crashing through the window behind him, spraying water everywhere and he drops his phone to the ground. The few drops of liquid that splatter his skin burn.

"Son of a-" he growls, "Go, go!"

Rebekah takes off past him, shooting straight for the door. She's inside in a second without bouncing off. Damon's right behind her into the living room of the house, no invitation needed, just enter at will.

The room is a floor-to-ceiling wreck, all the tidiness he'd glimpsed through the door earlier thrown into disarray. Hurricane Katherine is in the middle of it all fighting Hurricane Elena, raining down destruction and mayhem in their collective wake.

He steps over Sophia's body without pause and into the fray, helping Rebekah to haul Katherine off of Elena.

Elena's struggling like mad to grab hold of one of Katherine's flailing arms. Rebekah doesn't notice - she's just trying to contain as many of the flying limbs as possible without special attention to any one - but Damon does and fast as lightning he's got Katherine's arm in a vise grip and Elena's prying open her fingers one by one. Damon squeezes and Rebekah pulls and Katherine's hand flies open, and the little brown thing she was holding so tightly rockets across the room.

Then it's all mad scramble at vampire speed, until ultimately Damon's got his hands on it: a weird little brown glass vial, filled with liquid and sealed with wax. Right there in his palm. The Cure.

Rebekah's finally got Katherine pinned down, arms wrenched behind her back and shoulders looking dislocated. There's a sickening crunch and Katherine falls limp to the floor, head lolling uselessly on her neck. The Original sister plays at wiping her hands off and looks at him expectantly. "Well? Give it here."

Damon looks at the vial and looks at Elena, who shifts herself into readiness and quirks an eyebrow at him. _This is where it all ends_, he thinks as he throws the vial.

Rebekah catches it with one-handed ease and stops to examine her prize, holding it up to the light. Elena lets out an audible breath. It has the sound of something she's been holding in for days.

###

"What did it taste like?" Damon asks.

Rebekah thinks for a minute and then says, "Sortof like licorice."

Damon makes a face and says, "Ugh, better you than me."

"How do we test it?" Elena says through a sigh. As usual, she has no time for the weird bickering relationship that Damon and Rebekah have built up over the course of the trip. She just wants this finished.

"I guess we try and kill her-" Damon starts with a grin, but Rebekah cuts him off.

"The sun. It's still up, for now. I'm going to walk out there without my daylight ring. Should tell us quick enough."

Elena nods and motions with her eyes. "Good. Go."

Rebekah slides the ring off her finger and drops it to the ground, doesn't even watch to see which way it rolls. She is perfectly certain of the change to her nature. Damon opens the door for her with a little chivalrous bow and the dying light pours through the doorway as she steps out into the world. Her skin glows golden; eyes closed and face tilted to the sky, she revels in the late spring warmth.

"How do you feel?" asks Elena from the doorway. She's leaning close to Damon, but watching Rebekah.

"Well, she's not on fire, which is a good first sign." Damon mutters.

"I'm actually really tired," says Rebekah. "And...um...hungry...I think."

"Need a ride back to Mystic Falls?" Damon asks.

"No. I...I want to make my own way," Rebekah says. "At least try to get a head start on my brothers finding me, so they can kill me or re-vamp me or yell at me. I want to get started on my own family, as far away from that terrible town as possible."

"Probably for the best," Elena says.

###

"I didn't kill her."

"Hmm?" Damon mumbles at her.

"Sophia. The girl. I didn't kill her. If you were interested."

"Vaguely," he says. It's the first time she's spoken since they got back on the road, and he wants to keep her talking, keep her interested, now that the quest for the Cure is done and Rebekah's long gone. Stopped for gas in the middle of nowhere seems as good a place as any to get started. "Tell me about it."

Elena leans against the car next to him, looking out at the empty field across the road from the station. "Katherine showed up. Drank from So- the girl...a lot actually, almost too much. She was all wobbly and pale before Katherine let go. I was worried that she'd just drain her and be done with it, that there wasn't any secret in the house."

"But obviously that didn't happen..."

"Obviously, no," Elena says. "Katherine stopped at the last minute and told the girl some weird phrase; it was something like, 'Now we must honor the guardian of heaven.' It was all very Da Vinci Code."

"Sounds like part of Caedmon's Hymn. Katherine was always a sucker for the classics. A bit strange that she went with the modern English translation, rather than the Old English, but..."

"Ok, but what was _the point_, modern or old or whatever?"

He sticks his lip out and shrugs his shoulders. "Dunno exactly. Probably some sort of code phrase. Maybe a release mechanism on the compulsion hiding the Cure. That way no one - not you or even Katherine under duress - could get the hiding place out of poor, dead Sophia."

"Huh, never thought of using compulsion that way. I'll keep that in mind."

"Great, picking up more tricks from Katherine - just what you need," he says as he crosses his arms. But then he thinks of Rebekah and immediately uncrosses them and brings one up to tap on the roof of his car instead. Elena pretends not to notice his little dance.

"Setting that aside for the moment, what happened next? How did the girl die?" he asks.

"Katherine gave her the code or whatever. The girl went over to this huge vase-"

"-think I'm familiar with it-"

"-and pulled this giant flower arrangement out of it. When she cut the band off the stems, there was the Cure vial hidden in the middle."

"Bet the water in the vase was full of vervain too," Damon says idly.

"Once Katherine had it in her hand, she drained the girl dry. That's when I threw the vase out the window and went for Katherine."

"Interesting change of plan," he says nodding to himself, but then his eyebrows furrow as he thinks it through. "Glad it worked."

Elena shrugs. "I had to improvise, Katherine would have heard me using my phone. Stupid plan to begin with," she mumbles to herself, before returning to her normal volume. "The girl was already dead by the time I got to Katherine. Pretty quick she had me on the ground - she was just too strong, there was nothing I could do but keep her angry and focused on me, so she didn't try to run. And then Rebekah broke down the door and it was all over."

"So, in the end," he says, looking down at her, "she compelled the whole damn town - and was paranoid as fuck about it too - and we still won this round. I feel like celebrating."

"She's going to be murderously pissed when she wakes up and digs herself out of the hole we put her in," Elena reminds him.

"Yeah, well, murderous Katherine is nothing we haven't dealt with before. She got what she deserved for once." He tries to think of something else to say, to keep the conversation going, but Elena does it for him.

"I'm surprised you didn't ask me about what happened - to the girl, I mean. You've been so bent out of shape about my regrets, I figured it'd be all bad cop again as soon as we were alone in the car."

"Nope," Damon says. "I'm done with all that - no more restraint, no more regret, and no more fucking high road. Just like you asked."

He slings his arm from the roof of the car down to pull her close and smoothes her hair back behind her ear with the other, before running his thumb along her chin. "I'm done with appeasing, cajoling, and being the better man. Time to go back to being a 'self-serving psychopath with no redeeming qualities'...at least for a little while."

"I don't know how long it'll take-"

"-and I don't really care, it's fine," he says firmly. "Take the time that you need."

He lifts her chin with his hand so she looks up at him, and then his lips meet hers. There's no hurry in the kiss - it's soft and subtle and slow. Chaste even, in comparison to where they've been before, but full of promise. They break from each other at the same time and he pulls back just enough to better see her eyes.

"Just come back to me when you're ready. Until then...we'll have a little fun."

Elena is perfectly still - could be carved out of stone - while she thinks over his words. Then her eyes go dark and she flashes her teeth, a predator for all time.

"I'm hungry."


	2. dry

_A/N: "the low road" started life as a oneshot - the story was supposed to end with no clear resolution. But then a ton of people asked me about continuing it, which got me to thinking about how that would even work, which led to me falling down a rabbithole of a story while neglecting the other pieces I already had in progress. I still like it very much as a oneshot, but I like what comes after too._

_Please be aware: __**I've increased the rating from T to M.**__ There are some references to switched-off sexy times (nothing particularly explicit), but mostly the rating is for violence. Switched off vampires are violent folk._

_Originally I wrote one long chapter as a series of short little vignettes - scenes from Elena and Damon's trip out on the low road that I titled "in the country." But then several of the vignettes got away from me and the whole thing got huge, so I've divided it up into shorter chapters by vignette. Consider these little chapters together as part two of a three part story._

_Many thanks to afanoftvd, latbfan, and Trogdor19 for all the awesome discussions they had with me about continuing this thing. You should be reading everything they write because they are fantastic authors._

###

**[ the low road (part two): in the country ]**

**/ 02 DRY**

She slips it into conversation, easy as breathing: she's never drained anyone dry.

Damon looks at her over the solid beige rim of his coffee mug, blue eyes framed by dark lashes. Elena keeps laying gold polish on her nails without pausing to look at his reaction. Her coffee cools untouched by her elbow.

"Not even while you were munching on cheerleaders?" he asks.

"Did you hear Caroline whining about having to hide a body? No, of course not. Something always makes me stop, whether it's my choice or another person's - every time I go to feed, " she says, laughing to herself. "That's weird, right? Weird for a vampire?"

There's electricity on the back of Damon's neck as she talks, prickly and cold. He's not sure how he feels about the turn the conversation has taken, going from mundane to dangerous between two sips of coffee.

When he pauses just a little too long she looks up at him expectant, so he settles for blurting, "Well...It's not _that_ weird."

"But it must feel good, right? I know...there's this pull to keep going, even when I feel them slipping away."

Damon shrugs. "Sure, we all feel that. Part of the vampire fun time package."

"Then it _is_ weird that I haven't done it - it should be totally natural for me."

"Nah, better to learn control when you're new," he says, keeping his voice level and undisturbed. "Otherwise you end up playing jigsaw puzzle party games with body parts and finger painting in blood. Believe me, you knowing when to stop means you don't have to sit at the vampire kiddie table for the rest of eternity."

"You mean like Stefan," she says.

"Stefan, sure. Rippers in general."

Damon wonders if she'll take the bait, follow the conversation down more lurid paths and leave the topic behind. He rifles through the grisly Ripper stories in his head, ready to shock and titillate. Stefan's not the only Ripper in the world running amok and they've all left trails of destruction behind.

But instead she frowns down at her nails and ignores the offered segue.

"I'm more like you than Stefan. You're always saying it, over and over. And I know you've killed people while feeding, so I don't see the problem."

Like that she's caught him - killed off the doubts wriggling in the back of his skull. All it took was a reminder of that professed similarity between them.

Damon justifies it to himself as her need for some kind of maturity, now that she'll never really grow up. She needs to experiment and find her way in the world.

(But honestly: there's a thrill that charges through his chest when she compares herself to him. And that thrill is ready and willing to bolster any justification his brain might come up with.)

So he snorts and leans back against the diner booth seat, throws an arm along the vinyl top - a portrait of relaxed grace. "Nah, no problems. For the moment, I am all about expanding your horizons. It's just a matter of finding the right time."

They've been driving since they left Katherine's town, all through the day and into the darkness. Stops along the way for gas and snacks and nail polish, but never more than a brief pause. Both of them want to get away from everything they left behind, so they head west, into wide spaces where trees don't cling to the road.

Rain poured down sometime after midnight, which forced Damon to look for a place to hole up. At least an hour passed with no luck before they pulled into the parking lot of a little railcar diner - all lit up, white and chrome and shining out through the deluge. Inexplicably open 24 hours in a rural town.

Now it's 3am, in what might be Indiana, but could be Illinois. Neither of them care. The rain roars against the windows, and there's no sign of it letting up.

"Can I freshen up your coffee?" the waiter asks.

He's young and tall, wide in the shoulders, with sandy hair and grey-blue eyes. They've been ignoring him with laser focus, for all the ways he reminds them of home. Damon's been chewing back snarky questions about high school football and high school dances (not quite sure how Elena might react), instead letting the boy sit on the counter and read undisturbed from a thin book.

They've been ignoring him so long and with such strength that they didn't notice when some waiterly-instinct brought him wandering over at the exact wrong time.

Elena and Damon's eyes meet across the table, blue and brown, for two long seconds.

Then it all seems to happen at once: she drops the nail polish brush and pulls the boy down into the booth next to her. There are streaks of gold left on his skin from her still wet nails when she drags his face around to look him in the eye.

"Don't scream."

The waiter's heartbeat races loud, counting off the moments left in his life. When Elena snaps her teeth into his neck, it speeds up even further. He panics and struggles against her, breath hissing through his teeth.

The nail polish brush skitters gold across the table and onto the seat as Damon slides from the booth. He wants a better view of what's happening. Moves himself so he can see and leans on the chipped counter next to the pastry case.

He knows what's happening for Elena, as he watches. Somewhere, in the slowing of every heartbeat, there's a bright line - this side life, that side death. And the blood pulls you along, with every mouthful convincing you to take and take and take, until the line is far behind you. But - for Damon at least - even then, even with that sweetness in his mouth, there is still always a choice, a moment when he can pull back, if he's so inclined. And he finds that choice intoxicating, possibly better than the blood itself. The ability to control his actions and choose - life for him, death for her.

Stefan is the opposite, as far as Damon has seen. He loses himself, swallowed whole by the feed. There is no Stefan - no control, no choices. Just hunger and blood, never satisfaction, never enough. Stefan consumes. It's only been in recent years that he's made baby steps towards the control he should have developed a century ago.

_And now_, Damon thinks, _we see Elena._

Blood soaks the boy's shirt from collar to waist. Elena drinks, no attention paid to the mess, in long squishy gulps, while his skin loses color and his limbs go limp. The once racing heartbeat slows and quiets, but Elena doesn't pause. She grips onto him even tighter, nails breaking skin where her fingers press too tight.

Damon touches tongue to teeth and watches as life drains from the boy.

He's made an art form out of self-control and moderation, but that does nothing to change his instinctual attraction to the scene before him - a beautiful girl and all that blood. The warm copper scent in the air is so strong he can almost taste it on his tongue. His body burns with demand, a bottomless pit screaming always to be filled, but he chooses to ignore it. Elena is magnificent as she feeds, even bathed in harsh fluorescent light - he drinks her in instead, fills himself up with the picture they make.

But soon enough he listens to the quiet human heartbeat slow until there's nothing left but silence.

When she pulls away from the ruin of the boy's neck her eyes shoot to the kitchen door. Damon can hear, just as well as as Elena can, the little noises of a person moving around in the diner's kitchen. She drops the body to the floor.

Damon doesn't stop to think: he's up and through the door to the back before Elena can make a move. He rips the cook from the griddle and presses him up against the wall. Their faces are close, blue eyes capturing muddy green ones.

"Don't yell, don't move. How many working here tonight?"

"T-t-t-two, me and Tommy. The new kid that does the dishes called out s-s-sick." The man is covered in grease and full of fear, shaking himself apart in Damon's grasp.

"Ok," he says with a jovial snap of his fingers. "Follow me."

Damon wanders back through the kitchen door with the man shuffling in his wake, terror written all over his face. Elena is hopped up on the counter near the body, cleaning her face with a wad of slim paper napkins. She flashes Damon a toothy smile when she sees the man following behind.

There's a whimper from the cook when he glimpses the body on the floor. This doesn't slow Elena's reach for him, leaning off the counter to pull him in close. Before she can make contact, Damon steps in the way.

"Easy, gorgeous," he says taking her face in his hands. "Think you can control yourself this time?"

She looks over his shoulder at the shivering man in the wide aisle. Damon watches her closely, ready for a fight, but she nods her head and motions with her fingers for the man to come near.

The cook jumps when Damon throws an arm over his shoulder, drawing him closer to where Elena sits on the counter.

"What's your name, sir?" He's asking the cook, but his eyes are always on Elena.

"R-r-roger."

"Ok, Roger, Elena here's just going to practice on you a little bit." His arm shoves Roger even closer, well within Elena's easy reach. "She'll take great care of you, pinky swear."

Roger stumbles and she catches him. There's a warm smile on her face now, brown eyes calm and fingers soothing. She coos to him and strokes his face. Roger's breathing slows and the shivering in his limbs calms. Her hands inch around his shoulders, taking Damon's place, gently drawing him into a comforting hug. Probably the whole thing takes seconds, but it seems like hours.

Elena takes her time angling his neck with her face until everything is lined up just so. Damon can't see with all her hair in the way, but he can hear the snap and crunch when she tears into Roger's throat. And he can definitely see Roger go stiff with pain as Elena traps him to herself. She wraps herself around him with all four limbs, crushing him while she pulls hard at the wound.

Within the space of a minute Damon hears this last human heartbeat begin to slow.

"Ah, ah, ah," he says. "Control yourself or live at the kiddie table for all eternity. Your choice."

She backs away from Roger's neck and hisses, blood covering a sullen mouth - but gives in all the same, biting her wrist and shoving it into his mouth. He whimpers and mumbles, muffled by her wrist, as the blood flows down his throat.

"Not _too_ shabby," Damon says when she pulls her wrist away.

He claps a hand onto Roger's shoulder and directs his attention to the bloody floor around the body. "Rog, I'm afraid we're leaving this place a bit of a mess, but I'm sure you are more than capable of taking care of things. Clean up any signs of blood from this whole area. Forget everything you saw here tonight. If anyone asks you about poor dead Tommy, say he went out on his break to meet a girl and never came back. Shame really."

Damon waves a hand over the body and walks over to the front door of the diner.

"You break it, you bought it," he says to Elena with a grin. "I have a tarp in the trunk once you get him outside - there's no way he's dripping all over my car."

And then he's gone out into the darkness.

By the time Elena comes stumbling out of the diner with the body (strong enough to carry, but unbalanced by the unfamiliar dead weight), he's got the trunk open and the tarp pulled out onto the ground. There's still a drizzle falling from the sky, but it's nothing as dramatic as the past few hours have been. A puddle has already collected on the tarp by the time she gets near enough to drop the body unceremoniously in the middle. Damon helps her bundle the wrapped body back into the trunk.

Elena's silent as he turns the car from the parking lot back onto the main road. He can sense the frustration coming off her in waves. It's understandable to him: she drained one body dry and then had to force herself to stop on the second. To a vampire so new, particularly one with her humanity switched off, it could be almost painful to pull back from a kill like that, especially with the memory of going all the way so recent in her mind. And it was her first time too.

He knows that all the frustration in the world is worth it, now that it's proved - she can choose _when_ she kills, _how_ she kills,_ if_ she kills.

No Ripper after all.

So he lets her sulk in silence, happy enough for the both of them. Just drives them without any comment to a lonely spot in the woods, where he commits poor Tommy to the dirt. Elena never gets out of the car or offers to help and he doesn't bother to ask. Instead she watches him through the window as the rain spits down. Half an hour later it's done and they're gone.

Damon finds them a shabby little motel while it's still dark, but only just. He wants a place to shower and sleep before facing any more time on the road or figuring out a plan. Maybe a quick bite from a maid. It's been too long since he properly fed and watching Elena devour the waiter had encouraged his appetite.

Elena's covered in blood, so he leaves her in the car while he goes inside to get the room. The old man behind the counter never says a word, just accepts cash and hands over a plastic room key.

Damon drives around the corner of the building to park in front of their ground floor room. He's fixated on taking a shower to wash of all the grime of the road. Elena's bloodier than him, but she's also pissed off and sulky, and he figures it won't hurt to let her stew a little longer.

In another time he would have flashed his best rakish smile and suggested that they save time by showering together. Old Elena would have squawked with rage and hit him. Recent Elena would have lit up with a smile - all the better to make him happy. But he has no idea about Current Elena - what she'd do or say in response to a flirty tease. After the events at the diner he decides not press his luck, to focus on one experiment at a time. So he reluctantly puts the shared shower idea (and all it would entail) out of his mind.

Current Elena has other plans. Once they're both in the room, she slams the door behind herself and tackles him into the far wall. There's light from around the edges of the curtain on the window - she didn't even give him time to hit the switch - but otherwise the room is dark and musty and silent.

He tries to talk, but her fingers curl across his mouth and cut him off.

Fingers get replaced by her mouth and too sharp teeth - teeth that slash open the skin of his lips. He tastes his own blood in his mouth when her tongue pushes past. She presses him into the wall, hands grasping at his shirt, tearing seams in a dozen places, but holding back from removing it entirely. The smell of the drying blood on her clothes fills his nose and mouth and brings to mind a flash of the recent scene: Elena in the diner, drinking life from the waiter's neck. A little breathy noise escapes him.

Damon tries to raise a hand to her face, to regain some semblance of control over her and himself, but Elena grabs his wrist, tight enough to crack bone, and holds it down.

So Damon pushes her, thrusts with his whole body instead of just a hand, away from both him and the wall, with all the force resident in his much older bones. She flies at the bed, landing awkwardly and bouncing, and then he's on her, caging her in with his arms.

He chuckles at her frustration and she growls back, tense in every limb. A full-on laugh escapes him (mostly aimed at himself, the man who tried so hard to be respectful and chaste). His laughter infuriates her, drives her to flail and scratch. The look in her eyes, shining at him in the dark, full of something more than simple lust decides it for him: he won't deny her what she wants twice tonight. Instead he lets her grab fistfuls of his shirt to pull it up and over his head. Lets her flip them over on the bed and crawl on top of him.

He's happy enough to be the target of all her aggression.

The laughter turns to a softer noise when he feels her teeth slip sharp into his neck.

###

_I was shocked and flattered by the number of people who hit "follow" on "the low road." If you have the time, I'd love to hear what you think of this continuation, even if it's just a few words. I'll have the next installment up in a few days._


	3. the phone

_A/N: I'm simply blown away by the response to the last chapter. I'm really glad you liked it. This one's a bit different, but I hope you'll stick with me for it. Remember when I said these chapters were originally all one piece? This is one of the shorter, less stand-alone bits._

_###_

**/ 03 THE PHONE **

Damon's phone buzzes all the time. The noise is incessant: a hive of bees kept in the pocket of his jeans.

Caroline calls three-times-a-day-everyday to leave him long information laden tirades berating him for everything he's ever done (and failed to do). She threatens him with increasingly ingenious retaliation - all because neither of them will call her back.

"Blondie is probably building a torture chamber in her house for me at this point - and not the _fun kind_," Damon says, looking at his phone, the disgust in his voice mixed with amusement. "These are getting kinda _graphic_. Didn't think Care Bear had it in her."

He sounds almost impressed.

Elena rolls her eyes. "Sounds like you should stay away from Caroline."

"Hell, that's always true. I'm just wondering if I'm being hunted down even as we speak," Damon mutters. He darts his eyes around in a mocking attempt to look for Caroline's attack.

"We're having this conversation about Caroline because...?"

Damon tries to sell his doomed request by being polite: "You could just call her back, tell her to leave us alone-"

Elena snorts. "It's not _us_ she's threatening Damon - just you, the big bad Salvatore. Caroline Forbes is not my problem anymore."

Matt calls every morning to leave short messages on Damon's voicemail, made up of nothing but questions for Elena: _Just wondering how you're doing, Elena? Do you know that we miss you, Elena? Any idea when you might come home, Elena? _

(Damon has to give him some credit: the quarterback is just the type of guy to make all that nagging sound sweet instead of passive aggressive.)

"He's playing twenty questions with my voicemail. It's fucking annoying," Damon snarls to Elena.

She just shrugs in response. "If they bother you, erase them. Or better yet, throw your phone away."

"Can't," he says, squeezing together his thumb and forefinger. "I'm _this_ _close_ to beating Stefan's Bejeweled high score."

Klaus calls once and Damon is sorely tempted to pick it up, just to see what possible reason the hybrid could have for contacting him. But then Elena comes out of the tiny gas station store where the've stopped for the moment, golden and dazzling in the too strong sun, and Damon thumbs the screen to send the call to voicemail.

Klaus leaves no message and never calls again.

Damon never mentions that one to Elena.

Elena threatens his phone, over and over, as they travel. Sometimes she fights halfheartedly to take it away from him. Other times she curses him, mocks him, tries anything to shame him into getting rid of it himself. But she never comes close to success and, as far as he can tell, isn't even really trying.

She says the noise of it vibrating in his pocket bothers her ears, but he thinks it's something more. She doesn't want any reminder of all that they left behind, so she hides behind flippant comments and mock violence whenever it comes up. What he doesn't understand is why she isn't trying harder to get rid of it - to force a permanent end to this last line of connection.

(Not that it would matter if she did manage to destroy the phone. If Damon's learned one thing in the past two years it's this: always have a backup.)

Stefan never calls, not after the first dozen were ignored.

But when the texting starts, Damon can't help himself. He reads Stefan's messages and eventually responds. Why he does it, he couldn't tell you if you asked. Maybe out of a need to prove himself right, win the old argument. Maybe out of brotherly devotion or brotherly rivalry. Whatever the reason he might tell you, it's only a surface explanation. It always comes back to this: Damon can't let go of Stefan - they're under each other's skin.

So Stefan and Damon text back and forth, about Elena and the trip. Around and around they go, each one questioning the other's methods in short sarcastic little bursts.

Stefan argues as loudly as a text will let him that Elena's actions (killing the boy in the diner in particular) will drive her further away from her humanity. When the day finally comes that she does switch back on, the memories of everything she's done will break her. Maybe she'll never come back from it. She needs to be home, surrounded by those who care enough to keep her in check until she comes back to them.

She needs to be contained.

Damon argues right back. Control from the outside has never helped a switched off vampire change their mind - Stefan and Damon are proof of that. Containment breeds contempt, and only encourages the contained to lash out more. Controlling Elena, even if it's for the kindest reasons by the kindest of friends, will drive her further away and deeper into denial. She needs the space to figure things out, to come to terms with the emotions she left behind.

Around and around they go.

Damon would lay money down that Stefan is judging _him _as much as the situation. Yet another example of Damon's selfishness - letting Elena run wild to satisfy his own desires, to get his way. Stefan never calls him out directly, but Damon can imagine the wrinkled brow behind every passive aggressive note.

Stefan doesn't really trust the new Damon: patient Damon, bumpless Damon, the Damon who promised to wait for her. So Damon does everything to convince Stefan that this method is working. He can see Elena changing, see little sparks of humanity - _something_ is happening. He just needs more time.

Stefan never brings up Silas, and Damon never asks.

Damon knows from the regular reports Caroline flings at his voicemail that things with Silas have reached a stalemate. The Originals skipped town early on (gone south to Louisiana for some reason), but Stefan and Caroline have managed to keep Bonnie safely hidden away from Silas without any help. They distract him and mislead him, discouraging any outright conflict they could never hope to win.

Damon tells himself it's for the best that he's here, with Elena. If Elena was still in Mystic Falls, roaming around switched off and seeking freedom, they'd all be too distracted by her to focus on the Silas threat. He's doing his part for the war effort by following her around the country, subtly encouraging her return to the land of humanity - and letting everyone else get on with it.

And given his past history, he's just as likely to provoke Silas into another, more personal massacre as he is to really help with their careful guerilla warfare.

(This is how he comforts himself, how he justifies it when he listens to Caroline's scolding messages. More and more Damon feels a twinge of guilt when he hears play-by-play descriptions of the fight against a now permanently immortal and very angry Silas. But all he has to do is look over at Elena, sleek and alive and _with him,_ and he can put the guilt from his mind. Justify it all to himself. For a little while.)

Damon never brings up the sex, and Stefan never asks.

He's not sure what he'd type if it did come up. He'd have to figure out what it all meant first, before he could ever translate it down into a meaningful text.

Elena always initiates, like that night after the diner. Sometimes she seems angry or frustrated or passionate - but it can be hard to tell if it's real emotion or just a good fake. More often Elena's mood is indecipherable, aside from the sheer fact that _she_ wants _him_.

She never lets him talk, during or after. If he tries to speak she stops him, with fingers or a fist or a glaring look. Slams him down on the bed or bites hard into his skin. After a few nights of this he gets the hint and stops trying to make any sound that could be construed as communication. Just lets it happen, in the dark.

It's not the same as what they had - that one happy night in the ancient past, before the Cure or the sire bond or Silas. Always something is missing, locked away where he can't reach. But it's still Elena, so it's still a brilliant shining thing, unlike the same acts with anyone else.

He knows it's worth it, worth bending to her rules, because sometimes he sees, in flashes and fits and starts, the barest hints of real emotion playing on her face.

So he never denies her when she starts another round. He watches and he waits, hoping that she'll find her way back to him through this, as much as through the feeds or the kills or anything else they do on the road.

But he couldn't explain it to Stefan, not with all the words in the world.

Not that it matters. He's already given Stefan the most important truth: this won't last forever. He can see it in her eyes, when she threatens his phone or cuts off conversation by lifting his shirt. There are cracks in the careful walls that he forced her to construct, around her humanity and her past. He has plenty of time - they both do. All eternity for her to find her way back.

And he knows he can already see the start of it - knows he can see it in her eyes.

###

_Thank you to latbfan for asking questions when I wrote the original first chapter - particularly questions about Damon & Stefan and what's going on back home. They really made me think through Damon's motivations._

_I should have the next (much longer, much plot-ier) chapter ready in a few days._


	4. prey

**/ 04 PREY**

This hotel is the best they could find, because Damon is tired of motel filth and Elena is tired of listening to him whine. As soon as they're in the room, Elena claims the bathroom (happily furnished with towels that are soft instead of crunchy) leaving Damon to sprawl on the bed and wait, lulled by the sound of the shower.

She loves the heat of the water on her skin, but more she relishes the time alone. For two years she's handled life with various Damons (rash Damon, angry Damon, love-sick Damon, foolish Damon, even heroic Damon) but somehow patient Damon wears on her nerves the most. And patient Damon is the only Damon around right now; all the other ones are off in hiding. It's like he's afraid to push her in any way, afraid he'll break this peace they've built between them. Afraid of bumps, and other metaphors from Life Before.

She snorts when she catches herself: she came in here for time away from him and somehow he's still with her in every thought.

So Elena shrugs him off - washes the thought of him from her hair and skin with a washcloth and bar of hotel soap. Focuses instead on the feeling of the water rolling down. On the feel of herself, inside and out.

There's a hole inside her, a wide circle from her navel to the top of her chest. She's certain that if someone were to cut her open to look beneath her skin they'd find a vast hollow place, with her heart crushed down tight in the middle. Nothing more than a pinprick of light. The switch took it all away and bound it up tight - her anger, fear, guilt, love.

Base amusement seems unaffected, so she still laughs and smiles and moans, but it's almost an animal state of being - less emotion than chemical reaction. Rage, too, seems unaffected, more a property of fight or flight than any higher process.

Everything more complex is just an act - playing pretend through all the moments of her life.

No humanity is in theory the ultimate freedom. Do what you want without guilt or remorse. Plan and plot without anger or love to cloud your judgement. Act as you will, when you will, how you will. Be and do, and let guilt go to rot.

And it _was_ freedom at first. Freedom to get rid of the Cure, to keep herself a vampire forever - without compassion or grief or love slowing her down. She could think and fight and do whatever needed to be done, while Damon and Rebekah squabbled behind her.

Since they left Katherine's town she's less sure of things. That ragged emptiness inside is always there, waiting for her. Feeding lets her forget it for a while. Sex too, when she lets herself go. But nothing is quite as good as those few days spent hunting down the Cure.

Maybe this insatiable need for blood - to drink and drink and drink without end - is really just an attempt to fill the emptiness that's taken up residence in her chest. Emotion used to drive her, back in the time before the switch and the hole. She remembers emotion, remembers drive, remembers how they gave her purpose.

Switched off, everything is simple: blood and control. But the simplicity is a deception: she wants to want more than that. She wants to want other things than blood.

And there's no answer for that from the hole in her chest.

Twenty minutes go by as she goes round and round between the head and the hole, looking for answers, before she reluctantly shuts off the water and steps from the bathroom with a second towel to her wet hair. Damon's eyes flick from the tattered paperback in his hands to her pale and perfect body, still damp from the shower. She just rubs her hair, undisturbed by his gaze.

"I'm hungry."

"Ugh, you're always hungry." The annoyance in his voice is affected; he's being dramatic for show.

"So are you. I know you are." She fumbles through a gym bag packed with clothes, all newly acquired from high end boutiques in Kansas City.

"Sure, but I'm less whiney about it. What'll it be? Room service? Lure someone up from the bar?"

A tight blue dress goes over her head while she thinks.

"Would you have stopped me?" she asks abruptly.

"Stopped you...?" he replies, confused. Not the turn of conversation he was expecting, too busy noting the distinct lack of panties under her dress.

"A few days ago. At the diner. With the cook." She continues to search through her bag, never looking his way. "I could have killed him if I'd wanted. You could have stopped me, physically pulled me off him, if I hadn't stopped myself. But I'm curious whether you would have."

"I did warn you when it was close."

"Not the same thing. Would you have _stopped_ me?"

He looks at her, wet hair already curling around her shoulders in a dark wave, tanned skin glowing next to the vibrant blue of the dress. His head cocks to the side.

"I wanted to see what you'd do. I nudged you once, but after that, well...Roger was in your hands."

There's a comb in her hands now, sliding workmanlike in and out of her hair. Damon drops his book on the bed and pops over to where she stands, taking the comb from her. Elena's fingers let it go without a fight; she turns her body around to offer him a better angle. Loves the soft scrape of the comb on her scalp and the slight tug as it glides through her hair. So much more gentle than she ever is with herself.

The pink streaks weave in and out of the rest.

"I understand the cut," he says after a minute or so of silence. "New outlook, vast lifestyle changes - completely natural that you'd want it different. Not sure I get the pink though, seems like teenage rebellion that you're a thousand times too mature for."

"I _was_ rebellious and immature once. You didn't know me then - or I guess you did, but only for a second. Then my parents died and everything changed. And Jenna died and everything changed. Alaric died. Jeremy died." She says these things in a monotone, not even faking an emotional bent to her voice. "Everything changes. I used to be a wild kid. Then I was a serious one. Now I'm whatever this is."

The air is full of the smell of the lavender scented conditioner she used in her hair. He continues to comb it out, far past the point of necessity.

"So this is some desperate attempt to reclaim lost youth? You're a couple decades early, might be better to pace yourself - save it up for the inevitable 150-year-old existential crisis."

"No," she says simply. "You were right the first time - I wanted a change. I couldn't stand the pin straight hair anymore - it belonged to someone else, two lifetimes ago. But the curls...too easy to look like Katherine. I'm not her either.

"Something for which I am _eternally_ grateful."

"I wanted something to differentiate us," she says quietly. "The color is a compromise until I figure out a more permanent change. I could cut it all off short or shave my head or something - and I might still if nothing else seems reasonable."

She pauses to think for a moment, before she continues, "Can't scar anymore, so that's out."

Elena turns around as he finishes one stroke, catches his wrist before he has the chance to start another. Her hand falls to his arm, where she rubs her thumb along the tiny letters just inside his elbow. "I don't get how the two of you managed to keep your tattoos. Why doesn't the ink heal out of your skin?"

"Eh, witches," he says too fast, with a calculated shrug. "Story for another time. I thought you were hungry."

It's an obvious diversion - one of many he's thrown at her over the course of the trip. Lately he's always trying to soothe her or direct her or distract her - perhaps to regain some measure of control while he follows her around.

She briefly toys with the thought of provoking him into revealing more - mostly for the fun of an uncontrolled Damon outburst (any Damon but this patient one would be such a relief) - but instead she lets him have it. Decides to start saving up these little mysteries he dangles in front of her. Some day she'll need it for her own distraction.

She turns instead to consider her hunger and decides that fulfilling simple need isn't enough.

"I am hungry, but it can wait a bit," she says, and then pauses for effect. "First, I want something from you."

There's suspicion on his face, but his voice is amused when he asks, "And that would be?"

"I want to watch you hunt."

"Pfft," he says, waving a hand in the air, "Easy. You've seen me feed plenty of times. If that's what gets you off then-"

"No. Not feed. Hunt. I want to watch you stalk and chase and catch. Not in a club either, with a hundred people standing around. Somewhere more private."

She can't tell what he's thinking. The live-wire smugness that usually pervades him has drained away, leaving a face like a mask behind.

"You used to hunt, remember?" she continues, unsure how best to convince him. She covers her unsteadiness with callous words, trying to push him to react. "Remember before blood bags? Before _be the better man_? When we first met you were leaving bodies all over Mystic Falls - in the woods, at the football games."

She grabs at the collar of his shirt, to pull him close and whisper in his ear.

"I want to see you dangerous again."

###

Earlier in the day when they'd driven past Elena hadn't looked twice at the woman hanging clothes up to line dry in the late afternoon sun, but when she asked Damon to hunt for her it was the first suggestion out of his mouth. A rundown farmhouse out in the country, with weeds in the flower beds and a single vehicle parked out front.

He was mostly quiet on the trip back to the house from the hotel - so strange to Elena after the past week of almost constant chatter. He broke his silence only to give her a few simple instructions: if she wanted to watch, she had to climb somewhere high, like the roof of the building - both for a better view and to avoid tipping the woman off to their presence.

Other than that he'd kept to himself in the passenger seat of the car.

It's country dark on the road, a solid blankness so thick it presses against her eyes. She brings the car around one shapeless corner after another until it pops from nowhere: piercing brightness that outlines the vague sketch of an old, old farmhouse.

She pulls to the side when they see it and lets him off. Takes the car further up the road and around yet another bend to the edge of a deeper darkness, a mass of trees that stretches on a little ways. She gets out of the car and starts to walk in the direction of the house, keys still in the ignition and doors unlocked.

The stars swirl overhead, bright with no moon to shut them out of the sky. Insects click and twitter in the grass, early-hatched harbingers of the coming summer. The air is warm for spring and still heavy with moisture despite the rain of the past few days. Off in the distance thunder rolls, but there's no sign of paired lighting yet - only the beginnings of a cooler, storm-driven breeze from the same direction.

An earlier version of herself might have missed all this - the look of the stars, the feel of the rough grass on her bare legs - too wrapped up in emotions to let herself go. Now there's nothing to remove her from the physicality of the world and she revels in all the heightened levels of her senses.

From her angle of approach the house is a dark silhouette - no light from the front porch or driveway, just edges of brightness from a flood lamp around back. The details resolve out of the darkness as she gets closer: paint peeling on the sagging porch; a beaten down truck, with a broken taillight and cardboard taped over the side window, parked in the driveway.

When she reaches the garage she hesitates, trying to decide the best way to get onto the roof. Increased speed and strength aren't quite second nature to her yet - she can manage when needed, but never with Damon's grace. In the end she just flings herself wildly into the air and lands awkwardly on the roof above the porch.

The tarpaper tiles scratch at her palms as she makes her way along, up and over the peak of the roof. She continues to crawl along until she has a clear view of the backyard, in the shadow of an attic window that thrusts up from the main roof. Down below she can see the woman they drove by earlier, brown hair in a messy bun, pulling sheets down off the long laundry lines.

There's no sign of Damon - not a whisper or scent or shadow. After several minutes concentrating all her senses, she gives up trying to guess Damon's plan of attack and lets herself relax and follow the show. She hugs her knees into her chest and tucks her curls behind her ears to keep them from her face as the storm-bringing breeze picks up.

The woman makes her way methodically down the line, pulling one sheet down at a time. She shakes each out before folding it carefully, over and over, and slipping it down into her cracked plastic laundry basket. The third sheet is down and flapping in her hands when her head snaps around towards the darkness away from the house. Elena's eyes follow along, searching for whatever caught the woman's attention, but not bothering to really stretch her vision past what the human eye can see. The woman stares a minute more before shaking her head and turning back to folding the sheet in her hands.

A moment later she freezes, white folds billowing in the breeze around her arms. She never turns her face, just stares down at the piled sheet. Her frozen posture puzzles Elena, but then she realizes: the woman must be listening rather than looking.

The woman sets the wadded up sheet down into the basket. "Somebody out there?" she calls. Her voice is deep and rough, calm despite her apparent apprehension.

"Why don't you come out and we can talk about this like reasonable folk? No need to be standing out in a field, eh?"

The woman makes her way along the sheets, heading away from the house, weaving in and out of the fabric that blocks her view of one side of the yard or another. Elena thinks she sees a smudge of deeper darkness streak past to one side, there and gone again, but it was so fast it could have been her imagination.

The woman obviously notices something though, out away from the light. She turns and walks back towards the house, never running, but definitely not taking her time. As she nears the edge of the back porch, Elena leans over to get a better view. She doesn't know what Damon's plan might be, but she doubts it involves letting the woman get back into her house, where neither one of them has been invited. He must be somewhere close, waiting for the right moment to snatch her up.

Then everything happens fast, and there isn't time to think, only to react.

Strong hands wrap around Elena's face and throat, pulling her back from the edge. Shock runs through her, even if there's no accompanying fear. She bites down on the fingers covering her mouth and tastes copper and cinnamon and fire. No human blood tastes like that, full of power and lust - Damon's on the roof with her, arms wrapped around her neck, _not down in the dark_.

She doesn't even attempt to fight back against his pull, just pushes herself forward with all her strength, rolling them both off the roof. Damon is so intent on her capture, teeth scrambling for her neck, he doesn't realize what's happening until it's too late to stop.

They fall from the roof, twisted up together, to land in the mud three stories down.

Damon pushes himself up to lean over her and laughs as he wipes mud from his face to flick at her with his fingertips. "Nice save, pushing us off the roof like that."

"What the hell, Damon?" Elena replies. The attack and the fall shook her up, brought something light up from the depths of her. She acts without questioning her changed mood, grabbing fistfuls of mud to chuck it at him. He throws up two hands to try to defend himself, but one sails up and over to land on his ear and slide down his neck, into the collar of his mud ruined shirt.

He wipes at the mud on his face with the less dirty sleeve, grinning at her all the while. "You were so serious back at the hotel, I couldn't help myself. _I want to see you dangerous again._" He mimics her monotone perfectly and earns another chunk of mud in his hair for his trouble.

"I figured I'd let you get the up-close-and-personal version of _dangerous Damon_ one last time." He flashes his eyes at her, grin fading into a look more akin to longing, as he whispers, "Besides: you were always my favorite prey."

Sarcasm is ready on her lips, but instead her mouth twists into a howl and her fists press to her temples. She feels Damon's arms tighten around her, but only distantly compared to the popping, bubbling fire in her brain.

When the pain finally recedes seconds or minutes or hours later, Elena looks up along the barrel of the shotgun to the brown haired woman's face. Sheets snap in the breeze behind her, but otherwise the world is hushed and waiting.

"Vampires, listen up!" the woman hollers at them. "You're gonna get the fuck off my property immediately - _do you understand me_?"

Damon pops up from the mud at vampire speed, wrenching Elena along with him, but makes no move to get closer to the woman.

"And you plan to make that happen how, witchy?" There's no humor in his voice as his snarls at her, eyes wide and angry. "I'm pretty sure, based on the performance you just gave, you're strong enough to take down maybe one little baby vampire - but you sure as shit can't manage that on me. Try it again and I'll have you on the ground in a second."

Elena rubs at her hair, annoyed at the residual pain in her head and Damon's 'baby vampire' comment, but rattled enough not to put herself in harm's way.

"Fucking cocky vampires, never leave well enough alone," the brown-haired woman mutters to herself, as if they can't hear every word.

She raises her voice to address them again. "Sure, I could attack you and you could attack me. I'd shoot you both full of these wooden bullets, maybe take one of you out, and still get ate dead, no question." She nods as she talks, no fear in her voice, like she's discussing a change in the weather rather than her own impending death.

"But then the rest of my 'witchy_'_ friends - already on their way here, just so you know - would likely be inclined to end both of you permanently. So how 'bout instead the two of you take your weird little mud wrestle to someone else's garden, save us all the trouble, eh?"

Elena doesn't wait for Damon to respond with another threat or actual violence, just pushes at him with one muddy arm and shakes her head. She feels nothing for this woman, living or dead. But she does care very much about a pack of witches chasing them down - and she won't hesitate to fight Damon over it, even if he is on the edge of exploding.

"This isn't worth it, Damon. Get over the anger and _think_."

Damon turns rage filled eyes to her; Elena just stares back at him, her own eyes narrow and her mouth tight, not willing to give any ground. For a moment the three of them are very still, all waiting to see what he'll do. They make a strange scene, the two of them staring at each other, muscles tensed and jaws set, while the woman holds them at gunpoint.

To Elena's surprise, Damon breaks first, with a strained laugh and shake of his head. Elena knows that sound when she hears it: anger and frustration and a million reasons to be wary.

All he says is, "Fair enough," before turning and walking away.

The woman keeps the shotgun trained on them as they move into the darkness away from the bright lights of the house.

###

_A/N: Many thanks to all you lovely readers who are leaving reviews, it really helps to see what people think when I'm working on future chapters. Sorry for the slowness with updates - the pieces of this story seem to require a ton of drafts before I'm really happy with them. But better slow than rushed, I think._


	5. rain

_A/N: Hello again friends! When I said I was going to slow down between chapters I honestly had no idea that it would be *this* slow. Mostly I blame it on this chapter in particular - I went through so many drafts I lost count, it just did not want to shape up into something that fit my standards. _

_###_

**/ 05 RAIN**

Maybe irritation is like rage - a baser emotion, more caused by chemicals than any higher function. Or maybe it's just the latest crack in the walls around Elena's heart. Either way, Elena is full of aggravation, right up to the brim.

She never stops to consider _why_ tonight has gotten under her skin - or _what_ that frustration might mean. She's too busy seething quietly, turning it all over and over in her mind: Damon's false hunt and the fall into the mud and the brown-haired witch that chased them off.

She needs a release, a way out of this eternal loop in her thoughts, the incessant review of all the ways the night did not go as planned.

So she picks a fight with Damon and calls it logic. Calls it release and distraction and tells the finer points of what it all might mean to go to hell.

"Excellent hunting demonstration," she says, with obvious contempt.

Apparently her mood isn't quite contagious yet, because there's humor in Damon's voice when he replies. "You were so dead serious back in the hotel with all that 'I want to see you dangerous again' stuff _-_ I thought it was the perfect opportunity to lighten the mood a little."

"_Lighten the mood_," she repeats his words slowly, dragging them around her tongue. There's a fizz in her brain from those words - she can't understand them, can't understand _the point_ of them.

Damon sighs to himself as they make their way across the field, towards the woods and the car parked just beyond them. It's obvious he wants to keep the conversation from devolving into a fight, wants to defuse her like a bomb before there's any chance of an explosion that will only hurt them both.

But it's too late and too bad: Elena is done with being soothed.

"That's what you are now, isn't it?" she says, never once turning her head to look at him. "All patience and calming tones and _lightened moods_. You're not a vampire, you're a grandmother. Next you'll be putting on an apron to bake me cookies. Want to pat me on the head and tell me what a good job I'm doing?"

He stops short at the edge of the trees, lets her continue on past him toward the road. "And what is it you're supposed to be _good_ at exactly? The piss-poor defense you attempted back there?" He looks down to the earth as he continues, "Ric has to be rolling in his grave - for more than one reason, now that I'm thinking about it - but especially after seeing the _thrilling_ defense you managed."

She spins around to face him and starts to reply. "If I'd known-"

He cuts her off, suddenly angry and very, very tired. "-but you wouldn't know, would you, if I was just some asshole trying to attack you."

She takes an unnecessary breath and looks at him, quirks her head to the side and studies his face in the dark.

"You absolutely are _some asshole_." Elena wraps her lips around the repetition of the curse, savors the surprised expression on his face at her uncharacteristic profanity. "Doesn't change the fact that if I hadn't _specifically_ _asked_ to watch you hunt a human, my guard would not have been down. Under normal circumstances, it would have been zero trouble for me to catch you in the act."

Damon snorts and shakes his head. "Honey, you do alright, but-"

She doesn't let him finish, jumps in and cuts him off with petulant snark. "Ever think maybe you've lost your edge, Damon? All these years in Mystic Falls babysitting a pack of teenagers. Maybe there's just no dangerous left in you, so you'd rather talk about my failings."

Her mouth presses outward into a wide sly grin. Brown eyes stare razors into blue as the words come tumbling out. "Maybe the only prey you can hunt is the kind that you ask to wait on a rooftop for you."

He explodes sideways, slamming her back into a tall willow tree. Her skull cracks against the trunk while her arms fly wide and wild from her sides. Rough bark scratches her bloody in patches, on her bare legs and neck, and pulls at the dress stretched tight around her body. There's a sting on her skin and a ringing in her ears, but it's only for a moment - and then everything is healed and perfect again, stasis returned.

"Careful, sweetheart. There's mud in my hair and I'm just the _slightest_ bit edgy."

She laughs in his face, full of amusement that never reaches her eyes. It excites her that she's finally antagonized him past the breaking point.

"I'll remember that for next time - if I want the old Damon back, I have to rub dirt on him first."

"You want to see me fucking dangerous, Elena?" he asks. "You had your chance back there with the witch! You're the one who told me to get over my anger, _remember_? Told me to _think_. So here we are yelling at each other in a field about it - that is," he says, smug smile back in place and dangerous charm in his voice, "unless you'd like to go back, give it another go. She's probably bluffing about having friends anyway, with a personality like that."

She smiles coldly and shakes her head. "I meant what I said: the little witch wasn't worth the trouble she'll bring us. Of course, if she'd already been hunted down - like someone promised she would be - she'd have been in no position to cause any trouble later on. So I fail to see how this is my fault."

Damon opens his mouth to respond, face written with anger, but something - some thought or instinct or the look on her face - gives him pause, and there are no quick words from him.

Instead he stares into her eyes like he's looking for something he's lost. His voice is low when he asks, "What the fuck is this all about, Elena?"

"I just wanted to watch you hunt, simple as that. I wanted to learn something from you. After all this time," she says, words tumbling out in a rush, "all these conversations where you harp on me to learn to be a better vampire, and I'm finally interested in getting that from you and-and- you have to go and be so _Damon_ about it."

She can see the regret seeping into his eyes - regret for snapping her into the tree, regret for everything that's happened tonight. The angry tension in him fades and his grip on her arms loosens, but he doesn't back away from her or the tree.

"Oh."

"_Now_ he gets it," she says, eyes never leaving his. She waits for him to say anything, to respond to what she's said, but nothing comes, so she presses him again.

"You want to hunt me, Damon? Fine, we can play that game - here and now, you and me, here in these trees. But if I catch you before you can catch me, you have to teach me. _Really_ teach me. No more bullshit, no more jokes."

"Fuck, Elena," he whispers. He runs his fingers along her jaw and up into her hair, to brush a lock behind her ear. "Of course I'll help you, no question - but for now let's go back to the hotel, snack on a maid, clean up a bit. Tomorrow we can talk it through or beat on each other or whatever you want."

His face is soft and his patience is returning and soon enough he'll be comforting her again. Elena doesn't let him have the chance. She gives her head a sharp shake and says, "I won't be humored anymore, Damon. I won't ask you for something again when you've already proven that you'll do whatever you want, whenever you want. I won't wait till tomorrow or the next day or the next for you to change your mind again."

She points a finger into his chest. "I beat you at this, _you lose_, and you teach me with no more screwing around. Not tomorrow - _now_."

"Elena-"

"What's the matter, Damon? You can't be that scared of 'one little baby vampire.' Or are you really that put out by a bit of dirt in your hair? Finish what you started."

"Fine," he spits the word at her, patience finally snapping. "You want to learn to hunt? Lesson one: _come get me_."

And then Elena's finger points into empty air. Damon's gone, flashed off in some direction, too fast for her to notice the direction. She doesn't move, just lets herself lean against the the trunk and listen, remembering for once not to breathe.

Thunder rumbles closer and the breeze picks up. The tree sways in response, ready for the ancient rhythm of a spring storm to begin. Her ears are full of white noise: insects buzzing, leaves rustling, night bird calls, water gurgling in a nearby creek. She doesn't try to think about or analyze all that sound, just remains still and filters it, searching out some tiny speck of intention.

Like the slightest whisper of grass bending under a careful boot.

She follows the sound with her mind. It moves in a slow and lazy arc through the field, circling her position at the edge of the trees. Damon is waiting out in the darkness for her first to make the first move.

Her hand sneaks up automatically to tuck a breeze-pulled curl behind her ear while she thinks things through.

Damon never plays fair. Even though he's said "come get me," thereby presenting himself as prey, she know that in reality he'll do something unexpected, go on the offensive instead of hiding or running. Turn the game around and hunt her to keep from ever being caught himself.

And when he'd caught her for a _second time_ in the same night, he'd get another chance to gloat. Probably pour out a bourbon for Ric back at the hotel - complete with some fake mournful look on his face, all the while laughing at her with his eyes.

Elena decides right then: she's going to rob him of the satisfaction. She _will_ catch him - in a way that Damon would never anticipate. And when it's all over, there will be no room left for him to gloat.

She takes off into the woods, directly away from the sound of Damon in the darkness of the field. She weaves in and out of the branches as the wood becomes a tangled thicket, moving quickly for a human, but never reaching for true speed. She doesn't try to cover any noise she makes as she crashes through the brush.

The wind picks up, full of the smell of rain. Long strands of hair swirl into her face but she ignores them and presses on.

She runs, continuing even when the sky breaks open above her. Water pours down, soaking her dress to her skin in moments. Her hair plasters down onto her face. She's only made her way for ten minutes or so when the rain forces her to pause when her wet, dark locks cover over her eyes and mouth.

Night flares into day for a brief second when lightning crashes down so close. Elena spins around to peer through the pouring down darkness, but there is no swift and deadly shadow that she can see. She kicks off her ruined slipper shoes and puts her hands to the hem of her soaked dress - pulls it up, yanking against the tide of water that flows along the contours of her body. It sticks and stutters, wet fabric unwilling to let go of cold flesh, but ultimately the friction is no match for her strength.

Then all at once it pops free and becomes a crumpled rag in her hands.

She lays the fabric down along the exposed tree roots at her feet. It sticks to the bark, a brilliant blue flag against the wine dark wood. She looks again, back along her path through the woods, but there is still no sign of him. Lightning illuminates the trees but the world is full of static - rain falling, leaves crashing. She has no real chance of seeing him - has to instead pin her hopes on her likely too short head start.

When the thunder follows lightning seconds later, she throws herself straight up to catch hold of a thick branch above her head. The bark is rough on the wrinkled skin of her fingers, easy traction she uses to leverage herself around and up, coming to crouch on the tree limb like a bird. She listens again from high up on her perch - all her focus pitted against the white noise patter of rain on leaves.

But the storm is still too much for her to handle - she sees him before her ears can detect any hint of his presence. She watches him creep into the shadow of her tree, sees him crouch to examine the display she's left for him down below. He runs a hand along the length of her abandoned dress, as if looking for any clue - a bloodstain or a tear that might tell him where she's gone. She knows in that moment that his senses proved no better than hers against the downpour: he lost track of her in the noise of the storm.

Damon stands again and leans against the tree. She watches him go preternaturally still - the pure predator inside him rising to the surface and setting aside his human mask. She knows she has a handful of moments before his eyes turn upward to meet hers.

Elena steps from the branch and falls to the earth. Her bare toes ram into the mud with the full force of her fall.

His shock at her sudden appearance is written on his face - blue eyes flared wide and mouth parted - but his expression softens when his eyes drift down to take in the picture she makes: body naked and hair dripping and not one ounce of shame.

Her hands come up to touch his face and pull delicately at damp dark locks that have wandered into his eyes. He makes no attempt to pull away, just stands while she explores him with her fingertips. She leans her face in close, eyes locked on his lips as her palms skim along the line of his jaw. Her breasts press against his soaked shirt when their lips meet and each of them tastes the rain.

Elena has Damon's undivided attention when her hands twist with brutal precision to snap his neck, but there's nothing he can do to stop it.

He slides boneless to ground, limbs scattered across the roots of the old oak. His head lolls awkwardly to one side, as clear a sign of death as any.

Elena pulls the blue dress up from the ground, where it's grown heavy with water and mud. She wrings it out and shakes it dislodge the dirt, with no care for the garment's longevity. She manages to bring it back to a semblance of respectability, before slipping it back over her head and settling it on her hips. It's obviously wrecked, torn open in half a dozen places, but the holes aren't in places that would cause your average Kansan to blush.

Only after she's clothed does she pause to look down at Damon, crumpled on the ground. He looks so simple lying there, all the aggression and the anger and passion stripped away. She studies his face - thick lashes framing eyes that seem at peace, more peaceful than at any time when he's awake, no matter how comforting he might seek to be.

The downpour starts to taper off, fat drops replacing the driving lines of rain. The woods echoes with the sound of heavier water meeting new leaves, individual pops and patters taking the place of the storm's static. Thunder rolls again, but it's farther away. The storm is moving off.

She looks off along the path of the storm, following the ever more distant lightning with her eyes.

She should go. Any irritation she felt before has dissolved away with the rain, down into the earth, exchanged again for the coldness of reason. She should go. She knows it. She should get free of this last connection to her old life - save herself from the trap of emotions for good.

But instead Elena kneels down on the moss beside him, straightens his limbs and pulls his head into her lap. Arranges him so that the bones will knit together smoothly as life returns. His black hair is disheveled and muddy; it twists in all directions. She smooths it with a wet hand, rubs the dirt from the places the rain hasn't swept clean.

She doesn't know why she does it. It is a thing that just happens, like the rain falling down from the sky.

This man. With a heart so full it makes him reckless - the opposite of everything she thinks she should want. It makes absolute and perfect sense to leave him here. Strike out on her own. Begin again, start over.

But even with her heart missing from her chest she can't let him go. The emptiness within seems to be emptying the world without - squeezing everything down, to the taste of blood and the sound of a heartbeat.

Damon forces himself through somehow, creates his own personal exception to the simplicity of the switch. There's something about him that she doesn't understand anymore - but she knows she wants that understanding back. Wants to know why she feels she has to keep him. He's become a puzzle she needs to solve, an itch in the back of her mind.

Back in the hotel all she wanted was to _want_ again - something more than blood, something to distract her from Damon's perfect patience. Strange that she should find herself here now, with a want so connected to Damon and what he can give her.

So she watches him while the rain slows to nothing. She watches him while life creeps back into twitching fingers and fluttering eyelids. She searches for some sign of what he means to her.

But there are no easy answers to be found in the healing ruin of his body.

"Much better...this time." His voice is hoarse and slow as life returns. He brings a hand to his head, rubbing dirty fingers through newly smoothed down hair.

"Better," she whispers to him, voice soft and calm. "But mostly it was a trick. I meant what I said before. I want you to teach me - really teach me. I want to be more than I am now."

"Like I said before I'll teach you." he croaks. "But tomorrow...ok? I need a drink before we do anything else."

___###_

_Hopefully all that hard work paid off and this chapter does make at least some sense. Drop me a review and let me know. I've got the next chapter well in hand, I think, so it should take me less time to post it. And I'm betting it'll be a smidge less angsty than these past two. Thanks for reading!_


	6. the game

**/ 06 THE GAME**

Damon keeps his word.

They travel just as aimlessly as ever, but now with more purpose in their stops. Elena questions him on every topic and he answers, and every environment they pass through becomes a classroom for their study. Elena learns all the skills of a cat: how to jump and fall and maneuver in the air with grace and speed, how to climb river bluffs and houses with equal finesse. They track humans through forests and cities and sleepy suburban towns.

And endlessly they fight, with words and fists and every weapon that comes to hand.

Elena takes to her new life with single-minded focus, filling herself up with knowledge - always, always seeking more. She drives Damon crazy with her need to know, never letting up until they're both exhausted. Strengthening herself becomes her greatest passion, a way through emptiness and eternal grinding hunger.

There's only so much that can be done in a day before both of them are limp and drained. And without a concrete goal in front of them, that strange awkwardness returns - as Elena struggles to regain her self and forget her past, while Damon waits too patiently, always giving way.

It becomes inevitable that at the end of every training session they fall almost with the force of gravity into the nearest bar. And over all the nights of tension, with their shared past heavy on their minds and tongues loosened by fatigue, a drinking game develops:

Mention Mystic Falls and take a shot.

Mention Stefan and take three.

So now every time they sit down in a bar the game governs the hours, held fast in its own little rituals. The bartender gives up a bottle and three shot glasses - meant for use only in the game. The liquor is always nasty and cheap, guaranteed to burn even a vampire's throat, but otherwise ordinary. They keep on drinking their own normal choices right alongside - Damon downing bourbon while Elena samples tequilas and vodkas and rums.

In Salina Kansas they go all night without either of them taking a loser's shot. They talk about everything _except_ home and those left behind. There's a gaping wound in the conversation, a gap they tiptoe around and eventually have to overwhelm with the liberal application of non-game alcohol. It's probably the drunkest Elena's ever been.

In Greeley, Colorado, they manage to spend an entire evening where the present is the present (and the past stays past) - and home is furthest thing from their minds.

The glasses still sit in a line at the edge of the table, just in case.

But most nights - like those evenings spent in North Platte and Cheyenne and Boulder - one or the other of them will slip up and the first shots will go into a glass. Elena likes to whoop and laugh and shout her victory when Damon has to throw one or more back. When Damon catches her he just pours the shots silently and shoves them in her direction, grinning wide and flashing eyes at her.

Sometimes they manage to control themselves, even after they've each lost a few. They leave the place behind in search of warmer drinks and further privacy.

And sometimes the game goes too far. Every time it means they wreck the bar.

Tonight starts no different from the others. Damon picks the bar (a shack with paint peeling and floor boards coming loose, clinging to the edges of some tiny mountain town in western Colorado) and Elena picks the booze (a cheap knockoff variety of Bacardi 151). They tuck themselves into a dark back corner, away from the old men nursing drinks at the cramped bar and the pair of bikers shooting pool on the broke-down table.

They've been there bare minutes when Elena reaches for the game bottle and pours herself a shot - leaving Damon to wonder if the bar owner has any insurance on the junk heap where they're drinking.

"I should be at Prom tonight, back home." Elena says and takes the shot. Her mouth puckers around it and her eyes squeeze shut as she swallows.

"ohmygodthatsawful," she gasps out. "I thought a clear one might be better somehow."

"I think you meant to say _we_ should be at Prom tonight, back home." He pours his own shot of the clear liquid, raises the glass in a mocking toast to Elena, and throws it back without even a wince. "I'm dashing, you're stunning. Caroline is furious because she has some elaborate bullshit plan for the evening that includes a rented limo - but I insist on taking you in my car. We dance and drink and probably fight some monster or each other." He grins at her. "Then the night ends as all good Proms should."

"And how's that?"

"Drunken fucking in the backseat of a car."

She laughs and warmth spreads through his chest. Well worth taking a loser shot of horrible to hear her laugh and see her, if not precisely happy, then at least content in her own way. Relaxed.

"Maybe I wouldn't have taken you, did you consider that in your perfect little evening? Maybe it'd be just the girls in that limo Caroline rented, no Salvatores allowed."

"Think you're being sneaky with that reference? You just earned yourself the coveted three shot penalty," he says, filling all the glasses with clear liquid. Elena throws her head back to look at the ceiling and mutter in disgust, before downing the shots as quick as she can.

As soon as they're gone, he pours another three. "Besides: you know I'd crash the party-"

"-ridiculous and frustrated and dramatic-" she cuts in.

"-and Stefan would follow right along to stop me from wreaking everything."

Around and around the conversation goes. Somehow the game has mutated under their feet. They're in a race to describe the details of all the possible Proms they can imagine, each a bigger wreck than the last, punctuating the mess of a conversation with the constant clack of shot glasses filled and emptied and slammed on the table.

Bonnie re-lives the ending of _Carrie_ and her out-of-control powers destroy the building.

Caroline brings Klaus as her date to teach him what it means to be good.

Silas shows up to wreck havoc, but instead learns a valuable lesson about love and friendship.

Elena eats the Prom Queen out of spite.

Vampire Rebekah ruins everything. Human Rebekah saves the day.

Werewolves attack. Aliens attack. Ninja turtles attack.

Click-clack, the shots flow and the stories grow more and more ridiculous. They kill one bottle and move onto another, laughter growing louder by the minute.

Shot after shot.

One.

One.

One.

Three.

Three.

One.

One more and the second bottle's done.

Damon heads to the bar to get another. The bartender is obviously irked at them (for the noise they're making in the back or for being young and strange and beautiful, who knows), but a quick compulsion nets them another bottle with a minimum of fuss.

"Maybe you wouldn't have even gone to Prom," Damon says when he gets back to the table. "Maybe switched off Elena doesn't have time for shitty vodka in the punch and chaperoned slow dances."

"I had time for cheerleading," Elena says.

"You had time for eating cheerleaders, you mean," Damon replies.

"Got me there."

The weird joy of the last twenty minutes of drifts into comfortable silence. There's a thoughtful look on Elena's face as she runs a finger around the edge of one shot glass. Damon just nurses his bourbon and waits for her to speak.

"What was it like for you when you turned it off?" she asks quietly.

He throws back the last of the caramel liquid before answering. They've drunk enough that he's loosened up, willing to talk through topics that he would otherwise avoid.

"In the beginning, it was amazing. I was full of rage and frustration and grief, and then _snap_," he says, fingers clicking in the air right in front of her face, "it all went away. No guilt, no grief, no love, none of it. No one could make me do a damn thing - or take anything away from me. Everything was easy: feeding, fucking - sensation on my skin and blood on my tongue. The world belonged to me."

"Sounds about right." Elena smiles a goofy smile, the sign of all those shots on her face. "So why would you ever turn it back on, if it was so incredible?"

"Eh, I don't think it was a choice. You did it."

"Me?" she squeaks out with surprise. "What did I do?"

"You slapped me," he says and then throws both hands in the air to preempt her interruption. "Ok, ok, alright, you've slapped me plenty. But that first time, that was different. It was...shocking."

"_I_ shocked _you_?" she giggles out. "With a slap to the face?"

"Let's say...it was very unexpected. I thought I had you pegged as just another way to hurt Stefan and, bonus, a gorgeous meal. Compulsion meant that no human had a chance of stopping me from getting what I wanted - so no one had stopped me in a _very_ long time. You resisting... it threw me off my game - for just the _tiniest_ fraction of a second - and that was all it took. It was enough to shake me up."

Elena giggles as she pours three shots in a line. "Awww. Damon Salvatore got all shook up by a little girl and it scared him enough to flick his switch back on."

"_No_," he sputters and growls. The shots disappear from the glasses as quick as she pours them - one-two-three Damon swallows them down.

"Someday _Elena Gilbert_ will realize the stupid switch really isn't about 'on' or 'off' - maybe it's a dimmer or a filter or maybe the older you get the harder it is to shut humanity out. I don't know how the fucking thing works. But it's exactly like you said on that roof in New York: hate and anger and need for revenge. I _felt_ all those things way back when. They creeped into my brain over the years and I didn't even notice."

He's silent for a moment, turned inward with eyes down, remembering. "When you hit me though..._that_ I noticed. And it made me notice other things too. I cared about my brother enough to want to make him miserable. I basically worshipped Katherine and I was desperate to get her back. And then there was you."

"Me?"

"You...intrigued me."

She snorts into her drink and slurs out a response. "What could possibly be intriguing about a teenager in suburban Virginia to a one-hundred-and-sixty-year old vampire?"

He shrugs and takes another sip of his bourbon. "You fought back. You never let me get away with anything. A thousand other girls would have let me kiss them and more - compulsion or no. Don't get me wrong," he says with humor in his voice, "there are plenty of people in the world happy to tell me no, but very few of them have ever been eighteen-year-old former cheerleaders."

"I'm starting to think you have a bit of a fetish for girls who tell you no. First Katherine-"

"_Katherine?"_ he shouts and squints and squidges up his nose, all that booze finally showing on his face. "Katherine _was all about yes_ as long as it got her what she wanted. The problem will always be that her yes never _means_ _anything_." He looks her dead in the eyes and says, "Never compare yourself to Katherine."

"But we have loads in common!" Elena yells in reply, too far gone to really think it through. "You and _Stefan_ for a start."

She giggles to herself, pleased with what she considers just another joke in the conversation. Damon sits still and quiet across from her, until the gears in Elena's head whirl around to process what she just said, and her hand reaches to pour new shots from the game bottle. He catches her wrist before she can lift the liquor from the table. She glances at him, giggles subsiding into unsteady breath.

"Know what else I remember from when I was switched off?" he says through gritted teeth. "I was an empty, waste of space asshole with no drive beyond my next meal. I had no goal in life except to rescue Katherine - and that was decades away from even being possible for most of it. So I just hung around, bored and waiting. Causing trouble just to fill the time."

"What happened to 'it was amazing'?" she asks, a cruel edge rising up into her voice. There's a tight place in the hollow of her chest where his words echo back and forth. She lets go of the bottle and crosses her arms. "Twenty minutes ago you were babbling about 'owning the world' - now it's all whining about how empty you were?"

Damon's face darkens and he takes more offense than he might have sober. Might be the bathtub full of terrible liquor or just the final exhaustion of his tenuous new found patience, but either way, he goes over the edge in spectacular fashion.

"Sure, I owned the world, but what was the point? I didn't give a damn about anything or anyone. I was empty and lost and I hated everything." He's on his feet, leaning across the table to tower over her, words spitting from his mouth. "As far as I can tell, that's exactly what you are right now: an empty little girl who doesn't know what she's living for."

"So how does it _feel_ being the lovesick puppy that follows the empty little girl around?"

The bottle of knockoff 151 shatters when it flies from his hand to hit the far wall. Every human in the room is silent and staring, shocked by the sudden violence from the booth at the back of the room.

"Still better than feeling nothing," he says, so quiet that only Elena can hear him, even in the abrupt hush that's fallen.

The silence doesn't last very long. Pretty quick the bartender is hollering and the bikers are crowding towards them. The closer one, a man with a long ponytail snaking down from an otherwise balding head reaches out to grab Elena's wrist - a readymade hero pulling an innocent girl away from her drunk and dangerous companion. She snaps his arm in two places and smashes him down to the ground.

His scream is high and falsetto, full of terror and pain.

Elena pulls on a warm, wide smile just for Damon, who cannot help but roll his eyes.

The old men make a break for the door, but Damon's over and standing in their way before they lay a finger on the knob. He compels them each in turn: "Go home, go to sleep. When you wake up you'll remember there was a bar fight between two bikers. You ran away and hid. You know nothing else."

He steps aside to let them scurry out into the darkness as fast as their legs will carry them. He turns back to find Elena in front of him, all the recent anger drained away into a drunken version of curiosity. Her face is a mess of black veins and her eyes are red - there's new blood on her lips and he can smell more on her hands. _Beautiful_, he thinks, and feels his teeth grow sharper in his mouth.

"Why let them go?" she asks.

Damon shrugs. "Need a plausible scapegoat for when we burn this place to the ground. Otherwise cops with questions, witnesses with accurate descriptions, and very annoying region-wide manhunts. Why let the witch on the farm go?"

Before Elena can answer, a shotgun blast tears through her in a wide and bloody mess. She crumples to the floor, clutching her chest.

Damon is a creature of pure rage when he falls on the man, teeth ripping open his throat. The bartender screams and tries to use the barrel of the gun like a club, a feeble attempt to fight him off. Damon crushes the man's hand without looking and the gun goes whirling across the room to slam into the shelves behind the bar, sending all the stacked liquor crashing to the floor.

He drinks until the man is dead in his arms.

The remaining biker flings himself from his hiding place behind the pool table - running full tilt at Damon, pool cue in hand like a spear, but he never gets close. Elena pulls him down to her as he passes by. She rips into his shoulder with her teeth, drinking deep while her wounds begin to close. When he continues to struggle, she snaps his neck and feeds unhindered.

And then it's all gone still and quiet in the bar.

Damon drops the bartender to the floor and heads behind the wrecked counter to poke around. He rummages through broken glass and rusty drink equipment, looking for anything that can be used to start a fire. The fight has cleared the over abundance of alcohol from his system - he can still feel the fraudulent warmth of booze in his blood, but he knows that won't last long now. He makes the deliberate choice to focus on clean up and let go of the fight that started this mess.

Elena rises to her feet, steadied by blood but clearly still intoxicated. He glances over the bar to watch. _Ever the lightweight Gilbert_, he thinks.

But then he can see the anger return to her face and it dawns on him: she isn't ready to let their fight go so easily. She's ready for round two, this time without human interruption.

Before he even knows what he's doing, Damon vaults over the bar - landing heavily but recovering with grace. In an instant he's in her space, pressing into her, and she's so startled that she gives ground, falling back across the room until she bumps into the pool table. She's overwhelmed by his presence, with movements more animal than human, aggressive and tense. Her hands come up as a shield through instinct alone - all defensive training trampled - but he snaps her wrists from the air before she can make any contact.

The sudden touch breaks her from the spell of his aggression and she catches herself, catches the fear blossoming in the empty spaces where nothing should be. Fear swirled with anger, _real_ anger, and the tiniest fraction of grief.

She slams them all away, steadying her face into a perfect mask again - but not before Damon notices and quirks his head.

He lets go of her wrists without a fight when she tugs back on them gently. Pale blue eyes stare into brown ones, searching for some other hidden sign. Elena brings her newly freed hands up to finger the collar of his shirt.

"The Damon I left Mystic Falls with was aggressive, impatient - quick to anger, slow to let go." Her hands slide down to the line of buttons and starts to pop them out one by one, following along with the rhythm of her speech. "He made rash decisions, particularly in the face of threats. There was so little anyone could do to stop him..."

Her voice trails off for a moment. Her hands slip inside his open shirt to flatten against his chest.

"Back at the farm all you wanted was to tear out that woman's throat but then you stopped - all because I asked, because you're walking on eggshells around me. You're afraid I'll see you as a liability and leave you. Or get annoyed and leave you. So you give me whatever I want, patient and flexible and..._resigned_."

He brings his head down so that his lips are an inch from hers, but he doesn't quite connect. Just orbits so close in her space.

"We made a deal back in New York, on the roof. I promised not to push - said I'd wait for you, for as long as it takes - so long as you stayed with me." he whispers to her.

"Do you think I want you like this?"

Damon leans back from her, hands flying up with exasperation into the air.

"I have no idea what you want, Elena. We're wandering aimlessly from city to city - sample a little blood here, a little mayhem there. You're interested enough in whatever I have to teach you, but that's a hobby not a life."

He sighs and looks down to the floor and crosses his arms against his chest.

"But I promised to wait for you - so for the moment I'm perfectly content to follow you around - _because you are what I want_. If that means chasing after you like a love-sick puppy, then so be it. Wouldn't be the first time I acted like an idiot in the name of love. Hell, this doesn't come close to the stupid things I've done in the past - and at least this time I have real hope that someday..."

He looks at her with nothing but hope in his eyes.

Her instinct is to throw it back in his face, how his emotions rule his life and make him weak. But there's something in what he says - the brutal truths that he's willing to admit - that gives her pause. She thinks back to the night when they hunted each other, when she snapped his neck but couldn't leave him.

The words that come out of her mouth surprise them both. "I... I don't know who I am anymore. Before all this started I was just some teenager - all I wanted was to go to parties and hang out with my friends. But then came disaster after disaster after disaster - I became this pathetic little girl with too much conscience and not enough sense."

"I used to define myself by the people around me. I was with _Stefan_, who let me make all my own decisions but had so much trouble telling me the truth. And then there was always you, the man perfectly comfortable laying out everything with almost _too much_ honesty - but completely incapable of letting me have any choice."

"That's over now, though, isn't it?" she asks him, but leaves no room for a reply. "I left that all behind. So what am I now? An empty shell like you said before? Just another dead girl wandering the earth with no purpose? Or can I be something more? I honestly have no idea."

"The one thing I do know? What happens now between _us_ is your choice. You can go on waiting patiently for the girl I was, hoping that I switch it back on and everything goes back the way things were...or you can be with me now, without holding back. _It's your choice,_ _Damon_."

He makes no attempt to answer her with words, just picks her up and sets her down on the edge of the pool table. Their lips meet with the full force of all the pent up tension of the time on the road and soon he's pushing her backwards, down onto the scarred felt, hands wrapping around her and his tongue in her mouth.

Elena feels slightest scratch of fangs on her lips and when she opens her eyes she catches a glimpse of black veins on his face - but only quickly, before he moves to follow the path from her chin to her throat with his lips. There's sweet pain when his teeth sink into the skin of her neck and subtle pressure when he draws her blood into his mouth.

All he can think of is how she tastes - sweet copper and fire and strength.

She cries out and his teeth come loose, returning to their human bluntness. He nips at her collarbone as his fingers scurry down, first to the buttons of her jeans and then to the edge of her top, fluttering - he wants all of her all at once and can't decide the place to start.

"Wait, wait, wait-" she gasps the words out when he turns his head and captures his hands lightly with her own.

He pulls back a fraction, puzzled - unsure what further turn the conversation could take.

"It's Prom night remember? Even if I don't get to go, I still want that perfect Prom night ending."

Damon squints for a moment, thinking back through the rest of the evening, trying to piece together what she means.

She doesn't wait for him to figure it out. "Drunken fucking in your car."

"Ah," he laughs, completely relaxed with her for the first time in weeks. "Better idea: semi-sober fucking on this pool table right now, followed by some arson and celebratory binge drinking, followed directly by drunken fucking in my car."

He leans down to bite again bluntly at her neck, where the wound from his sharper teeth is already fading. Her nails sink into the skin of his wrists in response. Blood wells up under her nails and drips down onto his arm.

His pulls back from her just long enough to mutter: "This way, everyone gets what they want."

She drags his wrist to her mouth and licks the copper stains away, before tearing at the delicate skin again with her teeth.


	7. puzzles

_A/N: Super, fantastically sorry for the long wait getting this chapter out. A combination of summer vacation plus this chapter being a general pain in the neck (ha!) meant that it took way longer than I wanted it to. I'm working real hard to build up a reserve of chapters right now, so that I can get them out quicker._

###

**/ 07 PUZZLES**

It's just the tiniest scrape, the briefest scratch - bare skin brushing so lightly over carpet.

A human would never notice it. Most vampires wouldn't give it a second thought - even if they were paying enough attention to pick it out.

But to Damon, listening intently to the silence of this house, it rings out like a bell.

"Heard that. You're in the hallway next to the laundry room." He doesn't bother to look up from typing on his phone.

A disgruntled sigh is the only response.

"You know the drill, back outside and try again. This time come in up top somehow - attic window or something."

He swallows the last of his bourbon and sets the empty glass on the end table beside him. Back down the hall he can hear the front door open and close - it's Elena, not bothering to cover the sounds she makes as she exits the house for the fifth time this afternoon.

They've been here a full day and night, the longest they've stayed in one place since they set out from New York - practically nesting in a foreclosed two-story family home, tucked away in a dying housing development on the outskirts of a dissolving suburban town, just west of the Rockies.

Whoever used to own this house is gone now, without any sign of where they went or what happened. The rooms are still furnished and nothing is trashed. They needed no invitation to get through the door. It's as if the previous owners just vanished off the earth, content to leave a cozy little vampire hideaway behind, in a perfect empty shell of a neighborhood. Plenty of room for supernatural practice free of prying eyes.

No neighbors around to bother them or notice any screams.

The phone in his hand buzzes and a new message pops up onscreen. He snorts and starts to type haphazardly with one thumb, while his other hand feels around on the end table, searching absently for the bottle of bourbon he knows is there. When his fingertips brush the glass he grasps at it with long practiced skill, pouring another double into his glass without a pause or glance.

The texts started two days ago, right before Damon found their cozy new temporary home. They came from a number he didn't recognize, with an area code that was Pennsylvanian not Virginian. Normally he would have ignored it - assumed it was a text from someone screwing with him - but the first text was so strange and somehow the opposite of hostile that it caught his attention: an overly mannered and archaically-phrased question about how humans manage to get around if they lacked a vehicle.

There's only person he knows who is both out of touch enough to be asking these particular questions and _desperate_ enough to reach out to him for answers.

Rebekah.

It was the highlight of his day when he figured it out - an un-vamped Original coming to him for human survival advice. He got the impression (but never asked about it directly) that she was avoiding her brothers and the rest of the Mystic Falls gang. She'd only come to _him_ out of complete desperation (and, he suspects, a fundamental lack of common sense).

Lucky for her he was currently the perfect combination of cheerful and bored - with just enough curiosity thrown in - to override his natural inclination to tell Rebekah to go fuck herself. On a whim he'd texted her back, eventually ending up in a back-and-forth discussion on the merits of various modes of public transportation. Now it's gone on for all of two days, the conversation gradually sliding from fake IDs to work visas to bar etiquette.

It gives him something to do while he waits for all the pieces to fall into place.

Around him the house is still, except for the subtle noise of his fingers on the screen and the occasional buzz when a message is sent or received.

Minutes pass by.

And then for a moment he freezes, head cocked to the side. Listening.

"Better this time," he calls back over his shoulder, "but I can hear the pull string for the kitchen fan swinging around in there. Again, try the back door this time."

There's a blur and Elena's in front of him. She's got his phone in her hands before he can react, but she's largely uninterested in it - just wants to take it away from him and wave it in his face.

"Is there a point to creeping around like this, over and over and over?" Her voice is thick with sarcasm. She brings the phone up under his chin to raise his face up. "I'm starting to suspect this is all some elaborate plan to get me to beat on you again - it's a sex thing isn't it? You're an old man with a kink for girls that hit you back."

All it takes is the snotty growl in her voice and the phone digging into his chin to make his muscles tense for a fight. He's up from the phone and behind her in a second, one arm wrapped around her neck, the other reaching out to pluck the phone out of her hands. Elena takes a sharp breath she doesn't need, full of the scent of leather and bourbon.

"You know," he says with lips pressed into her hair, right on the edge of her ear, "you're absolutely right." He pauses for dramatic effect. "This was never about teaching you to sneak around. As it is you're practically silent as the grave."

He uses his grip on her shoulders to spin her out and around to face him. The feral twist that was his mouth a moment ago widens to a grin. "Really I just needed to stall for time."

"Stall? Why?" Elena regains her balance instantly, pulling away from him and shifting subtly into a fighter's stance, tensed to react to his next move. Damon can't help but be just a little impressed at how far she's come, how effortlessly she turns suspicion into safety. He slips the phone into the back pocket of his jeans with overly careless nonchalance, eyes steady on Elena's. He watches her gaze flick to the movement of his hand, watches her analyze the action for information and danger, watches her eyes jump back up to meet his.

"No, wait, better question," she says, "What are we doing now that the stalling is over?"

"All this time," he says, amused at her instant suspicion, "these practice games we've been playing at? Kids' stuff - fundamentals. It's time for some real challenges."

Elena's posture loosens just a bit. She's more than ready for a change from the monotony of their current pace and definitely curious about what Damon might consider a 'real challenge.'

"Sounds fair," she says, crossing her arms. "What are we practicing?"

"Mmmmm, think of it less as practice and more as a test. We're going to challenge the most important weapon in your arsenal."

It's Elena's turn to roll her eyes, but her smile is colder than Damon's and her voice is full of snark. "This is going to be some sort of weird motivational speaker thing, right? Like my unbreakable spirit or something."

"It's your brain, smartass." He smirks at her, unwilling to be goaded. "Older vampires will always get the drop on you physically - they'll always be stronger and faster and more experienced. All you've got going for you in those situations is how fast and how well you can problem solve. Your lack of humanity gives you an edge, but only just."

"Is that what you've been doing nonstop on your phone for three days? Sexting with some ancient Nosferatu all this time trying to set up a duel or something?" She reaches around him to try to snag the phone from his pocket, but it's a slow feint, mostly for show. Damon play slaps her hand away.

"Please, you're nowhere near ready for a live fire exercise. We're starting out a little lower on the food chain for your first round. Win this and we'll see about getting you some of that Nosferatu action."

"Humans?"

"Humans."

###

Damon leads her out of the house and away, down the winding roads of the housing development. He hums to himself a little, oozing smug satisfaction. His lack of chatter gives Elena the time to reconsider the activities of the past two days in light of this new challenge - whatever it is.

She knows that Damon picked this house and development for a reason.

He's changed since the fight in the bar, doesn't dance around her anymore with too much patience and calm. The old her would have found the return to snark and agitation - along with all those bumps in the road - infuriating, but it does more to relax the new Elena than any soothing tone or carefully managed deflection, and she finds herself trusting him more and more to take her where she needs to go. She's no longer worried that he's doing his best to change her back. Somehow he's proven it, just through his willingness to fight back.

So she let him take over their travel plans for a little while, let him decide where they should go and what they should do there. Let slip some of her control, in favor of curiosity.

When he suddenly moved them from an endless string of hotels to a foreclosed house in the suburbs she accepted it without question. When he sent her into town alone on a series of seemingly menial tasks (good bourbon that required trips to multiple liquor stores, hours at a laundromat washing their clothes and arranging for dry cleaning) she figured he was planning something interesting.

The day spent creeping into the house over and over, though, seemingly without end, has worn her down a bit. _This had better be good_, she thinks, but never quite finishes the threat in her mind, just follows behind him over the warm sidewalks, through the hazy summer smells of grass and heated asphalt.

When they finally stop, six blocks and two turned-corners from where they started, she can't discern the reason - it's just a cul-de-sac of houses, tucked away at the edge of the development. Most of the buildings look abandoned - with un-mowed lawns and paint peeling away - but there are three in the middle that have life in them yet.

Damon turns to face her, arms spread wide to indicate the half-circle of houses at the dead end.

"Your assignment: get inside each of these three houses," he says, looking and pointing at the three better kept houses, "and call my cell from their landlines. You have 24 hours for each house - three days, three break-ins." He turns back and grins at her, smile wide and full of teeth.

It's obvious to Elena that he's inordinately pleased with himself over something - always a reason to be cautious around Damon, and even more so now that he's no longer pulling his punches around her. So she takes his mood as seriously - very few things make Damon happy that don't involve sex or trouble and this is decidedly _not_ his sexy voice.

"That's it? Just get inside and call your phone?"

"That's it."

"There has to be some kinda catch."

Damon smirks and shrugs and refuses to answer any more questions. Just turns her at the shoulders and shoos her into the street, aimed towards the first house in the row.

She approaches it with caution - paces the sidewalk out front, taking in all the angles. There's a red brick facade on most of the front, but she can see cream colored siding where the corner turns. Two car garage, porch light on, one car parked in the driveway. The lawn is manicured and neat, edged by a border of late spring flowers. The perfect line in the grass between this property and the next tells the story of the neighborhood: deserted there, protected here.

No toys laying around. No fence on the yard. No sound of animals. No signs of life.

What would be the catch?

Elena shoots a look out to where Damon has come to rest, leaning against a telephone pole at the opening of the cul-de-sac. He stares back, arms crossed, waiting for her to move. There are no clues she can see in his posture - he's relaxed and calm and kind of... smug?

That settles it for her. Whatever he has planned can't be terribly dangerous for her, otherwise he'd be on edge. So she shrugs her shoulders and crosses the lawn towards the porch. Three steps up and she's in front of the screen door, rattling it when she knocks with one fist.

There's no immediate response from inside, so Elena pulls the screen door open far enough to peer into the darkness of the house. She briefly wonders if maybe the house is uninhabited but somehow otherwise trapped, but quickly discards the notion when her hand bounces off an invisible wall blocking her path. It's still disconcerting to her, the way magic owns her life now - sometimes air is solid and sometimes it's not, and there's nothing the physical laws of the universe will ever have to say about it again.

"Hello? Anyone home?"

There were distant rustlings coming from inside the house, somewhere up the stairs and out of sight. At the sound of her voice the rustling stops. Everything goes quiet for a moment, before she picks out the slightest sounds of sneakers on carpet. _Whoever this is_, she thinks, _they move quiet enough to make even _Damon_ take notice._

Turns out to be nothing and no one out of the ordinary: the face of a scrawny seeming kid, no more than sixteen years old, comes swimming out of the darkness of the house's interior. Wide round glasses perch on his nose and cover most of the top half of his face. His hair sticks up in all directions, disheveled through lack of care rather than some ragged style.

"Hey there," Elena says, flashing a sweet smile. Her voice is warm and so close to being human, faked from her memories of what it's like to feel. "My car broke down a few blocks away and your house is the first one that seems to have anybody home. Think I could come inside and use your phone?"

She turns the charm on him hard, trying for innocence with just a hint of flirt - bites her lip just a bit in embarrassment and wrinkles her nose.

He reaches up and unlatches the screen door with one hand. The spring on the door is broken, so once the hook is undone it swings open wide. She steps back to let it move, doesn't get any closer to the boy. Doesn't want the invisible force between them to give her away.

But with the door out of the way she's free to notice his right hand wrapped in a large white bandage, with crusted blood showing all the way through.

Before she can even think to control it, she feels the darkness moving across her face, in veins and blackened eyes. One look at the boy's face and she knows that he saw it. He doesn't look afraid enough to move away from her yet, just looks tense and puzzled, trying to decide what's wrong with the beautiful woman who has inexplicably landed on his doorstep.

Elena tries to salvage the moment, acts according to logic without over-thinking. Any second now he could take off into the house - she needs to get him under control.

So she leans in as far as that invisible wall will let her, quicker than any human could, and catches his gaze. Nose almost touching nose, two sets of brown eyes locked together. She can't physically reach him to hold his face, so she has to be quick and let the compulsion spill without much subtlety or thought, before he can turn away.

"Invite me in _right now_." The full force of her will is behind every syllable, naked aggression lacing the words. No trace left of her earlier coy tone.

His mouth falls open and he stumbles back, tripping over his own shoes, obviously shocked by this stranger on his porch with her too wide eyes and dead voice. His hand flies out to grip the solid interior door - both to steady himself and to bring it within easy reach to close.

"Look, lady," he squeaks out, "I don't know what your problem is, but you really can't come inside. I'm sorry your car is busted, but I can't help you with it. I gotta go now and my mom will be home any minute and you should definitely go right now before she gets here."

The door slams shut in her face. She hears a deadbolt drive home from within, hears the boy slide down the inside of the door onto the floor, hears his breath tear out of his chest. There's something in that noise, in the panic that she hears from his heart and his breath that excites her and aggravates her all at the same time.

Elena wants inside, regardless of Damon's puzzle.

Thinking of him makes her turn involuntarily to look where she left him, leaning against the pole across the way. But Damon isn't out there anymore - no he's already here at the bottom of the porch steps, less than a foot away - looking up at her from below and grinning like a cat.

"You've got him drinking vervain." She says it simply, no question in her voice.

"Yep, him and his mom." he says. "Picked it up when we passed through Boulder - hippie all-natural grocery stores on every corner, perfect for organic chamomile tea and garden variety vervain."

"Why would you buy vervain?"

"Comes in handy," he says, lifting his shoulders and squishing his mouth, obviously pleased with himself but trying to act cool about it. "A weapon that can be used against vampires is good to have around."

"And the cut on his hand?" she asks as she crosses her arms. "You do that too?"

He doesn't bother to answer her questions. Just says, "Can't wait to see how you get in there" and turns to leave, boots crunching on the concrete of the path. He doesn't make it far, almost immediately swings around again before she has time to yell or comment or reply.

"Oh, and one other thing I should mention. Your mission is to get into this house with a minimal death toll. Eating them all is too easy - and easy's not at all what we're here for. So low body count equals higher score. Higher body count...well..."

"And I care about score because?"

"Just like any other game, darlin' - better score, better prize."

And then he's gone, zipping away out of sight. Elena looks down the road, idly wondering if he's out there watching her. Maybe he's up a tree or crouched in the bushes. Maybe he's sitting on a roof, eating popcorn and watching her through binoculars. But there's no evidence of it that she can see, so it becomes a moot point - if Damon wants to spy on her it doesn't change the game.

And if he isn't out there spying... Paranoia won't change a thing.

She turns briefly back to look at the locked front door again. Tucks a wandering strand of hair behind her ear and cants her head as she listens to the ragged breathing from the other side of the door. And then, without warning, walks away - down the steps and out onto the sidewalk, turning to take in the buildings as a whole.

Three houses all in a row. Each one trapped in a different way. She figures Damon went for escalating trials - first house easier than the second, and that house in turn easier than the third. She turns the puzzle over in her mind, looking for the greater loophole - the one cut that will sever the whole knot.

It comes to her, in that moment, that this challenge has nothing to do with the humans involved and everything to do with the original problem - how to defeat a vampire older and more arrogant than her.

Time to switch things up. She walks down the street, towards the third house, not caring in the least if Damon is out there watching.

###

The blinds in the kitchen are closed, but not shut tight, which lets the dying rays of the sun slip in through the cracks, casting bars across the man's face. Elena closes her fingers around his chin and gives his head a little shake. Smudges of red cling to his skin when she pulls them away again.

His eyes go wide when her hands come close again, this time landing around the sides of his face. The unsubtle pressure of her fingers angles his head away just enough. He whimpers when he sees the change to her face, but doesn't really start to struggle until she's already on his neck, biting down and pulling hard at the wound. He struggles feebly to bat her away but it just means that Elena squeezes him harder, with both the arms she throws around his sides and the teeth she has lodged in his throat. He gives up then, relaxes into her embrace and soon enough it's over: that fluid alchemy changes the weight in her arms from man into corpse.

He falls to the floor when she loosens her grasp. His blood joins the other stains on her hand, when she wipes her mouth with her fingers.

Elena looks around for the phone. Pops up onto the kitchen counter and grabs the handset from the base, charmed by the old style. The corded phone is an obvious affectation, one of a number of antiques in this house, almost uniformly decorated in the vestiges of the past. Her finger twirls through the spiraling black cord that links the phone's handset to its base; she leans back against the brick covered wall above the counter and dials. Dark stains smear along the track of numbers as the dial turns, streaks left behind by her bloody fingers.

She listens to the ring - once, twice, and then the click of the connection.

When he comes on the line he chirps at her like some customer service rep. "Damon Salvatore here, how can I help?"

"I'm in, it's done."

"Hellooo Elena, what a pleasant surprise, I was just about to come looking for you." There's a pause before he continues; Elena can hear the faint noises that accompany the phone pulling away from his face as he checks his screen for the caller ID. "Can't help but notice that you're calling from house number three. Did the kid in house one scare you that much?"

"You never said anything about going in order, just that I had to get inside each house."

"Fair enough. Third house though...I was expecting that one to take a while." He pauses again and she hears the faint sound of liquid sloshing in a glass. "Do you know the trick with that one?"

"You told them I was a vampire. Compelled them to believe it. Set everything up for these two - a woman and a man, living together - to try to defend themselves against me."

"Excellent work. So are we looking at a major cleanup operation over there or what? I figure, double Van Helsing plus vampire with no humanity equals death and destruction. Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're wrong."

"Really?" He's incredulous, suspicious, and then nervous - she can hear him, almost picture it in her mind, how the cycles of his emotions play across his voice and face. "_How_ am I wrong?"

"You know, I'd love to get into all the details with you, but I'm working with a deadline and I've still got all these other houses I have to break into. Talk to you soon, Damon."

She disconnects the call with a flick of her finger and lets the handset fall to the floor. It lands with a solid thunk, empty dial tone blaring from the speaker end. The man on the floor starts to twitch and stir and then he's sitting up, eyes open and darting around the room, hands rushing to his neck to feel his injury closing up.

"Sun will be down in half an hour," she says and the man visibly starts, looking up at her with eyes wide with awe. "Gives you plenty of time to get changed into something more presentable for the neighbors."

Out of the corner of her eye, Elena sees the slightest movement behind the man, in the doorway to the kitchen where another body is on the floor. The wife is waking up, but trying to be subtle about it, trying to find another way out.

"Actually," Elena says, pulling a vicious grin across her face, "maybe we should take care of one other mess first and then we'll get you changed."

The man follows the path of Elena's eyes to the place where his wife huddles on the floor.

###

Damon hears from her once more that night, a little after nine. It's another terse and vague phone call, this time from the second house. The conversation lasts no longer than two minutes and she hangs up on him in the middle of a sentence, when he starts to ask about the voices he can hear in the background.

He knows that she's up to something, knows that something is not quite right with how this is going. He'd intended the whole thing sortof like an obstacle course - figured she'd take it one step at a time. Of course he should have known better. When Elena threw her switch she became a creature of unpredictable actions and inscrutable thoughts.

But so far, so good. She claims that the houses aren't piling up with corpses. Maybe there really is nothing to worry about - maybe she's just picking her battles one by one.

Hours go by with no further contact. The sun comes up and crosses the sky. Damon passes the time on the couch, drinking bourbon and texting with Rebekah. As the afternoon wanders by he gets more and more confident that everything is going to be fine. Obviously Elena got lucky with the first two houses, but the third one is giving her trouble.

The sun through the windows creeps along the walls.

His phone bleats and shakes in his limp hands and he wakes with a start. He's fallen asleep on the couch, phone still in his hands. The glass he's been drinking from has rolled off the couch and onto the floor, spilling the last of an expensive bottle out onto the carpet. Damon rubs his eyes and looks around, taking in the empty bottles on the side table through the darkness. Somewhere between the seventh and eighth emptied bottle not even snarking at Rebekah could keep him from dozing off on the couch. Too much alcohol and too little to do but wait.

The sun's been gone for hours while he slept, the room gone dark - lit only by the rising gibbous moon. The phone in his hands keeps on ringing.

" 'lo?" he says, trying to hide the grogginess in his voice.

"Third house done." She sounds distracted, but doesn't fail to notice the dazed note to his voice. "Were you asleep? Since when did you start sleeping in the middle of the day, Grandma?"

"Too much booze and not enough to do," he answers sharply, already recovering. "You're really done? What time is it-"

"I'll be back soon. Loose ends here that need tying up."

He hears the click and the phone goes dead.

"Huh," he mutters to himself.

###

It's midnight when Elena finally returns - only about a day-and-a-half into her three days.

She's also filthy, with dried brown smudges across her nose and deep rust stains on her shirt. She reaches for the handle of the front door of their temporary house, but the knob pulls away from her before she can grasp it. It's Damon, opening the door just as she arrives.

"So?" he asks as she brushes past him towards the downstairs bathroom. The water's running in sink by the time he wanders over, bourbon in hand, to lean against the doorframe. Elena just ignores him, too intent on scrubbing the blood from her face and hair.

"Details?" he asks with mild irritation and takes a sip. "I was promised _details_ once you were finished - or was it someone else I was having cryptic conversations with?"

She splashes water on her face a final time and looks up at him in the mirror. "What do you want to know?" she asks, looking around for a towel to dry off with. When it becomes apparent that the house was left furnished, but not entirely livable, she leans over and dries her face on his shirt.

It's worth it for the look he gives her - real aggravation that he's been used as a towel.

She turns and wanders back to the living room space, taking in the side table covered in empty bottles. He drifts along in her wake, stopping for a moment to refill his glass from one of the few that still contains liquor.

"Just the little things - how did you get into each house. How many people died in the process. I want the story of how it went."

"Not really that much to tell. Vampires need an invitation to enter a house that has people living in it. No more living people, no more invitation needed."

"So you did end up killing them all," he says and rolls his eyes. "Well that experiment ended well."

"Relax," she says, face breaking out in a smile. "They're all still walking around."

Damon stops dead with his glass halfway to his lips. "You turned them."

"Yep."

"All of them."

"Yep. Seven people over three houses. Would have been eight but Mrs. Brinkley's daughter won't be home for the summer till next week. I'm guessing she technically lives at school now, so she doesn't count as far as invitations are concerned."

"Are you insane?"

Damon looks genuinely surprised for once and Elena finds it terrifically gratifying. She's beaten his game, faster and somehow outside the bounds of Damon's plans.

"What did you expect me to do with them?" she giggles at him through a forced smile. Tilts her head all coy, and shrugs, daring him to lash out at her. "You made them into traps and then left me to figure out how to disarm them. No living people means no invitation needed. You said to minimize the deaths and I did- Yes, I know they're all _technically_ dead, but only a little and then they practically got better."

"I thought you'd score an invite - deliver them a pizza or send someone flowers or _something_. There were plenty of loopholes in my compulsions you could have used.

"I did use a loophole to start, anyway," she says. "That last house - you compelled them all to know and believe I was a vampire. Not my fault the husband had a vampire fetish. He practically threw himself at me when I knocked at the door. And he was positively thrilled to help me get invites to the other two houses, but he didn't want to turn without his wife and then it all sorta rolled downhill from there. Ended up being _so _much easier than sneaking around and lying and figuring out a way around all your complex compulsions."

"But that was the point, this was meant to be-"

"A challenge for the 'most important weapon in my arsenal.' " She mimics his over eager voice from yesterday, before sweetening her tones to mock innocence. "Did I cheat?

"No, b-"

She cuts him off. "Did I break or bend your rules?"

"No." He gives his head a sharp shake.

"Then what's the problem?"

"It's not a _problem_, it's just - you turned them _all_."

She can tell from the look on his face that he's frustrated by her inability to understand. Any second now, she bets herself, he'll boil over and then it's just a question of how much furniture they break.

"Says the man who's almost single-handedly infested Mystic Falls with vampires."

"That was not my fault!" he shouts, but the look of incredulity on her face stops him from protesting further. "Ok, fine,_ mostly _not my fault."

"You're taking this way more seriously than I thought you would. You turned Vicki because you were bored."

"I turned Vicki because I felt sorry for her-" Again the look Elena flashes at him stops him short. "-and fine, yes, I was bored and I wanted to cause trouble for Stefan and a ton of other stupid reasons. But I didn't turn everyone on her _block_. It was just me and her, for better or worse. Mostly worse in her case."

"Fine, I'll accept that you at least had a reason with Vicki - whatever. But you're trying to tell me that you were always that careful about all the people you turned."

"I've turned loads of people. For all kinds of reasons," he says, voice rising back into a shout. "But never _a whole neighborhood."_

"You know, I never would have guessed," she teases him, "Damon Salvatore thinks turning is some sort of sacred act."

"It's not sacred...this is just...distasteful. Mass turning like that... it's something Klaus does-"

Again she cuts him off. She remembers the last time that Klaus turned a whole room of people into vampire weapons, at a country bar near a lake house vacation home. She remembers why he turned them, remembers who he sent them against. And it's the last thing she wants to discuss.

"Or someone with no reason to care - like say, a vampire with no humanity?"

"Even when I was switched off I had _standards_, Elena. This is just-"

"Practical? Logical? When you take away the moral aspect, it's perfectly sane."

"Nope," he pops at her. "Even from a practical perspective this was idiotic. We're leaving behind an hours-old nest of newbie vampires, all of 'em hungry and stupid. They're the exact opposite of staying under the radar."

"I'm not suggesting we take them with us. I gave them enough information to fend for themselves. We'll be long gone before they get to be a problem."

"Sure - for now. But it some of them somehow survive the early hunger and rage and villagers with pitchforks, _they're going to remember_ _us_, Elena. We changed everything. One instant they're alive, the next they're dead. We're burned into their brains. We're trauma. Maybe they thank you for it now, while everything is still shiny and new, but you have no _idea_ what they'll think a hundred years from now - particularly when they know, _for a fact_, that they were turned as part of some game."

She looks down and the curtain of her hair falls across her face. There are twinges in her chest, some strange ache rolling around the empty spaces. She still doesn't care about the people she turned - still thinks it was the most practical choice given the circumstances. No, it's something else, something in his voice that's causing this to seep through her control.

Suddenly this conversation isn't a game anymore and all the pleasure she was getting from the look on Damon's face drains away.

"Lesson learned," she says, voice gone dull.

Damon crosses the room, gait full of agitation, to pour himself a double shot of bourbon.

"It's still weird to me that _this_ was your plan," he says, punctuating his words with a deep swallow of alcohol. "I expect a lot of things from Humanity Free Elena - clinical thinking, brutal honesty, guilt-free meals - but _this_?" He pauses, tilts his head to look at her with sudden scrutiny. "_This_ I don't understand. It's weird and out of proportion and-"

"Maybe..." she says quietly, looking around the room, anywhere but directly at him. "Maybe I was curious."

"Curious."

"Never turned anyone before," she says, with more than necessary nonchalance and a too high shoulder shrug. "I thought...after what happened with us-"

Now it's his turn to cut her off. "That was the sire bond, remember? You should be fucking thankful you don't have _that_ connection with these people." He waves his hand around, still holding the glass, sloshing the dark liquid close to the rim. "Imagine all of them following us around, all scrambling to carry your bags and getting you snacks. Ugh, the worst."

"I'm not talking about the sire bond. I guess I was just expecting - at least with the first one - something... between him and me...just some small a connection...because I turned him..."

He tilts his head, eyes widening. "You wanted to feel something for them?"

For a second she doesn't know how to answer him. Wishes they could drop the whole topic. Wishes it had never come up in the first place. So she switches tactics, changing from dull to forceful.

"I just wanted to know what it was like to turn someone. Fleeting curiosity. And now it's done, I know what it's like, I know it's no big deal. Draining that kid in the diner was far more interesting. This was just nothing. An experiment. Let it go, Damon."

He grasps her by the shoulders and for a blind second she's not sure what he's going to do. His face is unreadable, his posture betrays nothing. So Elena braces herself for impact - for whatever comes in the next battle that Damon has in mind. But impact never comes. He just looks at her and then, after a long moment, leans down to press a kiss to her forehead.

"You drive me crazy," he whispers.

"And yet," she replies, "here you are."

He lifts her chin with a gentle touch and brings his lips down to meet hers. All his wildness is gone. She doesn't understand his sudden tenderness, pulls back away from him to look at him, eyes full of questions.

There's nothing left to say, though, so he picks her up and zips them both up the stairs, to the room they've been sharing since they got here. He lays her down on the bed as though she was made of glass, with soft and liquid movement. She can't help but stare up at him with wide eyes, confused by the turn of events.

"The reason I'm still here is something you can't understand," he says.

###

It's late when the text comes in.

Elena's asleep in the bed next to him, but Damon's still awake and restless. He's ready to leave this place as soon as possible, but knows that it would be better to wait until dawn. Knows that they need to leave as little trail as possible for the cul-de-sac vampires to follow. Since they'll be stuck in their houses all throughout the day, it'll give Damon and Elena the perfect opportunity to put hundreds of sun soaked miles behind them.

So instead he passes the time reading by the light of a small bedside lamp. When his phone rattles on the wood of the nightstand, he curses softly to himself and scrambles to grab it. Elena starts to mutter and stir, but finally settles again when the noise is gone from the air.

It isn't Rebekah this time, writing to him with another misunderstanding or question or comment on modern life - it's Stefan, texting from the east coast where the hour is even later and the sun is already heading for the horizon.

S: Heard anything from Rebekah?

Damon stares at the screen for a long moment. Rubs his face with his hands and thinks before typing back an answer. This is the first time Stefan's asked him anything about Rebekah in weeks, not since Damon first explained what happened to the Cure.

D: who wants to know?

S: Not a game Damon. We think she's in danger. Silas.

D: what's silas want with her?

S: Silas wants the cure so he can die.

D: old news

He sends the message and then pauses to think, puzzled by what Silas could want with her now that the Cure is gone.

D: revenge?

S: Loophole.

"Fuck." Damon mutters to himself. _There's always a goddamn loophole._

D: ?

S: It's complicated.

D: short and sweet version?

S: The Cure keeps Rebekah human. It's in her blood.

_Ah_, he thinks and rolls his eyes. _Loophole you could drive a truck through._

D: so Bex blood = cure. not complicated. problem?

S: We think he needs all of it for it to work.

D: all?

S: All her blood. He has to drain her. Kill her.

Damon stares at the phone for a long moment, until the screen dims to save power. Then he rubs his face again with his hand and looks over at Elena. Her hair is strewn across the pillow every which way and her mouth hangs open just the tiniest fraction. You could never tell from her face everything that's happened to her in the past few weeks. She looks so open, almost fragile, with none of the strength she's always shown. And certainly none of the cruelty.

The phone buzzes in his hand again. Damon doesn't bother to look at the message, just swings his feet over the edge of the bed and pads silently over to where his clothes are neatly folded on the dresser. He pulls on pants and shirt, only bothering with a third of the buttons, and zips away in silence - down the stairs and out the front door.

The concrete of the sidewalk is cold and rough beneath his bare feet, but he walks at a normal pace once he's outside. The nearing-full moon is high in the night sky and it would be irritating to have someone catch him speeding by - particularly in this neighborhood, so recently consumed by the undead.

He walks until he reaches the lamp posted at the corner, where this street crosses another. Steps into the grass and leans on the poll, swimming in a pool of light - dark hair disheveled from bed and clothes hanging loose. It doesn't take more than a few seconds to pull up the number, one of only two listed in his favorites (the other good only for calling a phone that's dead at the bottom of a river).

He hits the call button and listens to the ring. It barely makes it through two before the call connects.

"Damon?

"Hello, brother."


	8. hero

_A/N: Aha! Two chapters in the span of a week! Now we're cooking again. I want to thank all the lovely reviewers out there who have been leaving me such kind notes. You really are making my day with each and every one, even if it's just a tiny thought. You guys are awesome! I'm still trying to find the time to respond to all your feedback, but I will definitely get there._

**/ 08 HERO**

Elena dreams of blood.

She lies prone, unable to move, while it washes over her - slowly, methodically, in no hurry to be finished. The blood covers her - starting with hands and feet and spreading out and over - never drying, never truly wet, always this shade of thick and moveable. She can feel it in her hair now too, the sticky sweet substance plastering chocolate curls down onto skin. Her clothes cling, stuck as fast as her hair. She can feel it in the cracks where her toenails meet her toes, and in the tiny spaces between hair follicles.

Even when it seems to cover every part of her, it isn't finished. She watches it seep across her eyes, fading the world to shades of red and rust and crusted brown.

She lies there encased in blood. Through all the time that passes - maybe seconds or hours, maybe days or years - she feels nothing. No fear, no anger, no panic, no grief, no joy. She is a shell, hollowed out, the emptiness of her chest expanded to all limbs.

And she knows this then: this is what she is and what she will be, bloody and still.

There's a man here now, looking down at her. She doesn't know where he came from, or even when he arrived. Maybe he's always been there, watching the blood.

She knows who he is, even seeing him through red eyes. She turned him. He was her first. She took him from _that_ to _this,_ made him what he is. There are dark stains on his suit shirt, the trails she left when she tore at his throat. The wound she made is still there too, gaping. She can see where blood still throbs from it, in time with the beating of his heart. But when she listens, really listens with all the power blood provides, she hears nothing from his chest.

_Is this what I am?_

She hears the man's voice all around her, more part of the scenery than anything spoken aloud. In fact, his mouth never moves to let out a sound, but in the logic of dreams she knows that this is him speaking.

_Is this what you are?_

There's no response that she could give, even if she had the strength to move her mouth or tongue or teeth. There is no answer to his questions. Even if there was one, she knows it's for the best that she remain silent. She is so empty now, so much a hollow shell, that she is brittle. Any movement would crack her to pieces.

_"_What do you want me to do about it?"

The voice booms loud and angry and rushing, coming from one side rather than everywhere. The man's face is still passive, disconnected from the irritated tone. Dark veins cross his skin as he looks down at her, and darkness fills his eyes.

Suddenly she knows it's not the man's voice, it's someone else's, someone far away.

It's Damon. Not the man she turned.

Damon.

With a start she wakes.

It's dark in the car, in stark contrast to how Elena remembers the sky, from the hours before she fell asleep. She picks her head up from the window where it lay while she slept. There's a smudge on the glass from her cheek. Outside the world vibrates with white light from the so-nearly-full moon, leaving everything silvered and pale. She stretches and turns, the kinks in her neck and back evaporating into nothing as she moves.

They are parked somewhere, along some road. She can see mountains in the distance through the dark, but they are different than those they left behind this morning in Colorado, dry and somehow crumbly looking. There are no street lights and no road signs, just the asphalt marked with a dashed yellow line and the vast distances that stretch away around them.

"Not good enough, Stefan."

Damon's shout interrupts the silence in the car. She sees him now, resting his back against the driver side door, facing out into the desert. She can hear every word if she wants to, but mostly doesn't bother. It's yet another call in the now day-long series of conversations between the Salvatore brothers. Something is happening back home, a big enough crisis to pull Damon in, even a thousand miles away.

The dream has thrown her out of sorts and for a moment she's too muddled to remember why they are where they are and how they got there. But as the sleep falls from her eyes and the dream subsides to an unpleasant memory, the present and the past sync back up and the events of the day return to her.

###

It was Irritated Damon who woke Elena up this morning - leaned down over her and shook her shoulder, gruffly told her to get packed. Now that too-patient, too-kind Damon has gone back into hiding, all the other Damons cycle through: Cocky Damon, Sad-Sack Damon, Snarky Damon, Too Drunk Damon, Angry Damon. This version that confronted Elena this morning was already one of the less pleasant ones and the day had barely started.

He was already dressed, with the car loaded and ready to go, perfectly put-together even though he's been living out of a bag for weeks, same as her. Her own clothes were in the same state that they always end up - in various states of rolled and crumpled in her bag and on the floor.

(She added it to her on-going list of Damon Irritations that have built up in her head - always perfectly scrubbed and elegant looking, control freak over the radio, way too sensitive about how she drives his car...)

She couldn't tell at the time the source of his early morning frustrations, so she guessed that he'd flip flopped his opinion of what happened last night. How he challenged her with some puzzles and she'd beaten him, fair and square, through unorthodox methods. And yes, changed an innocent cul-de-sac into a nest of rabid and largely insatiable killers overnight. Maybe sleeping on it had turned him from the tender man she fell into bed with into this morning's whirling dervish of efficient packing and expedient getaway.

So of course she dressed to further his irritation, in short shorts that barely covered her ass and a tight red tank, pre-distressed with strategic rips. Clothes she already knew drove him crazy, on a day that he insisted they needed to drive for hours without end. _Let him deal with that in the car all day, _she thinks, pleased with what she considers subtle payback. When he came back in the room to get her bag, he blinked once or twice at the sight of her and looked to heaven, and she flashed him a wicked smile.

She'd effectively ramped Irritated Damon up another notch - taking him from Irritated-Over-External-Events Damon to Irritated-Over-External-Events-and-Sexually-Frustr ated Damon.

He'd pointed at her bag, still hemorrhaging clothing all over the floor, huffed back out of the room, obviously anxious to be gone. She took her time with her hair and a careful application of makeup, smashed the remainder of her clothes back into her bag, and made her way down the stairs and out to the car.

He leaned against the side of the car, taut and tense, looking out into the distance and talking to himself. But then she saw it - he wasn't talking to himself, for the first time in over a month he was talking on his phone.

That was when she knew that whatever had him all riled up had little to do with her.

When he noticed her staring, he gave a hurried goodbye to the person on the other end and disconnected the call. "You ready?" was all he'd said. She'd nodded and gotten in the car.

After that it was all driving, endless driving. Damon rushed them down back roads out of Colorado. Stopped only for gas as it was absolutely necessary. Told Elena to stay in the car every time, while he hung around the pump yelling into his phone. They never stopped for even the tiniest of snacks - Damon didn't want to risk the hint of a memory of the direction they'd gone. He was anxious to leave the cul-de-sac vampires without clues to follow.

He drove them hard all day, down out of the mountains and into the desert. She was fascinated by the landscape - as different from Virginia as the surface of the moon and like nothing else she'd seen in this life. Any other day, Damon would have delighted in playing tour guide, showing off the depth of his experience, but today he's sullen and silent, opting for either the radio or no sound at all. So Elena contented herself with the alien world outside her window.

Sometime in the late afternoon, saddled with her own growing irritation from hunger and boredom, Elena fell asleep.

And Elena dreamed of blood.

###

She rolls her head around on the stem of her neck and straightens her spine, banishing the last of sleep (_and the dream_) from her mind. She pulls open the door and steps out into the night. It's cold here in the desert, but she pays it no mind. The cold is like a color now or a flavor in a complex dish - it adds more detail to a scene, rather than discomfort or pain.

Damon turns around to watch her stretch, arms wide up in the air, hands balled into fists. She sees a quirked smile on his face when she turns. It amuses her that she can have such an effect on him with so little effort. He says a curt goodbye and hangs up the phone without waiting for any response.

"I figured out what I want for my prize," Elena says.

"Prize?" he asks

"For winning the game. You promised me a prize for scoring well."

"I was figuring we'd call that one a draw, since your solution meant we had to get the hell out a Dodge." The little quirk of a smile fades from his face as he speaks and his brows squeeze down over his eyes.

"I thought low body count equals high score?"

"Just because they're still _walking around_ doesn't mean they aren't corpses." And just like that, Irritated Damon walks the earth anew.

"You haven't even heard what I want yet," Elena says, making a shoddy attempt at soothing him with a flirty voice and distracting fake coy wiggle of her hips.

"Fine. What." It's not a question, just a prompt to keep talking. His phone is already buzzing again in his hand.

"You were right that we need to move on from the kids' stuff. So...I want to learn more about compulsion."

"Sounds great," he says, rushing out the words, eyes down on his phone, "next time we have a chance to stop somewhere-"

"And not just compulsion, I want you to teach me that weird mind...power...thing...you do."

"Mind power thing?" He looks from his phone to her face, perplexed.

"You get into people's heads, make them see what you want them to see." She doesn't know what to call that thing he does, with visions and waking dreams. He never talks about it and rarely uses it in front of her. The whole thing makes her curious, both the power and the secrecy.

"Ah." He's silent for a moment, looking down at the dirt. "That one's...tricky."

"How tricky?"

"Tricky enough that not everyone can do it."

"You and Katherine manage."

"For starters, Katherine and I are a lot older than you."

"We've got the time, don't we? Maybe it won't work right away but there's nothing to stop us from trying."

"You hungry?" he asks, an obvious dodge. Elena doesn't reply - she's annoyed with his evasiveness, so her eyes are wandering from Damon to focus on a light off in the distance, visible past his shoulder. It's super bright, but far enough outside of town that she doesn't know what to make of it. When she listens close she can make out a dull roar from the same direction.

"What is that?" she asks.

Damon turns around, boots scratching on the gravel scattered asphalt. He looks for a moment, then shrugs and turns back to her. "Looks like some kinda carnival. Bring the kiddies, it's all for charity, how much money can we pull from the marks sortof thing. Why?"

Elena grins, lopsided and toothy. "I could eat."

###

The carnival looms over them when they pull off the road and into the adjacent gravel lot that's being used to park cars. Night here in the desert is dark like nothing Elena's ever seen - darker by far than any forest in Virginia and several shades inkier than she remembers from the Kansas countryside. By comparison the total mass of the carnival is a white hot star.

They make their way together towards the closest entrance, under a gate that looks like twisting wrought iron. There are no words across the arch of the gate - instead there are curling vines wrapped around a huge crescent moon. Elena looks closely at the supports, curious how something that looks so massive could be part of a traveling show. The answer turns out to be a pattern that they see repeated everywhere throughout the faire: cheap and light materials gussied up with extra care to look expensive and heavy and beautiful.

In fact, the entire place is gorgeous - all done up in a Victorian motif, heavily influenced by Steampunk aesthetics. There's a wide central midway that runs the length of the faire, brightly lit by rows of graceful gas lamp lights. Closer inspection shows that these are nothing more than glorified tiki torches, each running on oil rather than gas, but from a distance a modern American would be hard pressed to tell the difference. Off the midway there are a multitude of tiny little alleyways, each leading through an overgrown jungle of games and rides and shows.

In the center of it all, towering over at least the tents and booths (if not the larger rides) stands a huge "iron" clock tower, with a face for every direction.

The place is packed. Elena realizes it's a Saturday night - she's lost track of the days while they've been on the road.

Elena gawks at everything, curious about all the little details that went into the carnival's creation. Damon isn't impressed. "This is supposed to be Victorian?" he asks her.

"Shut up, it's not a history lesson. It's for fun."

"Ah, fun, something you're an expert at," he snarks. He watches Elena for a minute, watches her stare at anything and everything, so long as it pretends to be iron or is brightly lit, and slowly the tension falls from his face, replaced with a creeping smile.

But then his phone rings again. Elena taps her foot in annoyance, sighs a long-suffering sigh and the moment is gone.

He pokes at her shoulder gently with the phone. "Go on, pick out a snack. I'll catch up."

She starts to protest, but the phone is already back at his ear. When she crosses her arms and glares at him, Damon tries to shoo her away. Elena doesn't budge. He gives an irritated shrug and flashes his eyes at her, before wandering a bit down the midway and stopping to lean against a light pole near the ferris wheel.

She follows his progress with her eyes and then sweeps away in a huff. Elena doesn't like being herded. The need for blood gnaws at her, but she ignores it. She is in control, not the emptiness in her chest and stomach crying out to be filled. Food will happen on her own terms.

(She doesn't want to think about blood. Doesn't want the sudden reminder of her dream.)

Right now, she convinces herself, all she really wants is to shake Damon up - more than enough impetus to overcome her hunger. For weeks he's largely ignored the crises going on back home. She knows that he's still in contact with his brother, but that's to be expected - each of them can't get away from the other, not over days or centuries. But the rest of them... she had hoped he'd left them all behind, that he was joining her in the blessed floating present, far away from the stifling heroics of the past.

She catches sight of the clock tower at the center of the carnival and a thought sparks in her mind. Turns to look back at Damon once again, still leaning up against the pole and smiles a little to herself.

Suddenly the night is full of potential.

The crowd flows around her in a steady stream, formed up into even flows of current - some going in this direction, some going in the other. Patterns emerge.

Couples out on dates, arm in arm or leaning, coy and flirty.

Parents scrambling to catch running children, screaming children.

Teenagers out in packs, swirling without end, groups forming up and dispersing with equal mystery. Bouncing off each other, often alone for minutes. With eyes for only those their own age.

Teenagers. Perfect.

First comes a young woman, caught up watching the lights of the swing ride, left behind by her wandering friends in less than a minute. Elena approaches from the side and taps her on the arm. When she glances up to look at the dark-haired woman before her, she's caught up in a face is full of sunshine and dark warm eyes. She can't look away.

"Hey. Listen to me. I want to tell you something. See that man over there behind me, leaning up against the light pole? Black leather jacket, skin-tight pants?"

The girl's eyes flick briefly away from Elena's to take in Damon. They widen more than a little before returning to the warmth of Elena's gaze. She nods her head a fraction, expression gone totally dazed.

"He's a national hero. Or maybe a TV star. You really want to talk to him. No, wait," she says, changing her mind, "you want his autograph. You simply can't take no for an answer."

The girl's leg shoots out, stiff and mechanical, eager to fulfill the command without question. Elena catches her by the shoulders and uses her strength to hold her fast.

"Ah, ah, one sec. He's busy right now - see how he's on the phone? Look at that clock up there, do you see it?" The girl might as well have been replaced by a robot; her face swings up where Elena points to take in the central clock that dominates the midway. "When that clock hits nine he'll have all the time in the world for you. Fifteen minutes from now. Repeat it back to me, what are you going to do when you see nine on that clock?"

A voice like rust emerges from the girl. "I really want to talk to the hero. It's such an honor. I want him to give me his autograph. I want it more than anything else in the world."

"Fantastic." Elena says. It comes out with a giggle, as Elena rides high on the stew of chemical raw amusement let loose by her brain. She uses her grip on the girl's shoulders to drag her around and push her out into the pulsing crowd. "Now go have some fun."

It takes Elena less than ten minutes to trap and compel fifteen or so more. To her delight, once she lets them go she sees them convincing their uncompelled friends that the story is true. _See that man over there? He's a hero, a TV star. I've seen him before I know I have._ At the same time they do their level best to keep everyone back, and soon enough a weird little open space starts to form around Damon, who pays it no mind. He's still arguing with his phone, back to gesticulating wildly.

Elena can see it in her mind. At nine the kids will rush him, desperately wanting to talk to their hero. They're already inventing stories about him, making him into the man they want him to be, arguing over the details.

The adults, couples and families alike, will be confused, but there isn't really time to compel a group of them too. She makes a little _tch_ noise to herself. She wants this to be big, wants to turn this faire upside down - shower Damon with all the love and respect a proper hero deserves.

She looks around for an easier way. Something less time consuming. She needs to create authority figures in the crowd, to spread information even to those who haven't been softened up. At the edge of the midway, almost around a corner, she spots a carnival worker in denim coveralls. She's pulling down the "gas" lamps one-by-one, checking the oil inside and refilling as needed from a plastic jug.

Elena doesn't give it a second thought, just dives back into the crowd towards where the woman is working. Manages to come to a stop behind her, just on the edge where the lights of the faire dissolve out into the desert dark.

"Hi, excuse me, ma'am?" Elena says, waving her hand through the air to catch the worker's eye. She's a big woman, tall and muscular, with close cropped and fuzzy orange-red hair. Her clothes are faux-period-functional - denim festooned with unnecessary gears and hooks and bits of metal, all of it flashing in the gas lamp light.

The woman twists around to look at her over her shoulder, giving Elena the chance to see the ornate name tag pinned to the right side of her coveralls. Her face is smudged with both grease paint affectation and machine grease mixed with desert dust.

"Sarah, right?" Elena says, pulling on her warmest pretend smile. "Do you think you could help me out with something?"

Sarah lets the lid of the lamp she's checking fall back into place. She turns full around to face Elena, pulling off thick brown gloves in the process and then wiping the back of her hand along her brow.

"Might be able to. What's the trouble?" she asks, eyes traveling up and down, taking in Elena's short-shorts and expensive pre-ripped tank - all of it completely inappropriate to the temperature of the desert night and the wealth of the town.

Elena edges closer to the woman, spinning slightly so that she can direct the woman's eyes into the crowd with a finger. "See that man over there?" she asks.

Sarah nods her agreement, lips tightening with irritation. "What about 'im?"

Elena whirls back, arms reaching up, hands clasping at the woman's shoulders. Sarah's blue eyes go wide at the sudden touch. When Elena raises her face to stare at the woman, Sarah makes eye contact out of some confused instinct. Brown eyes hold blue ones, unblinking, hypnotic. Pupils dilate, will flowing through the air.

"He's a hero. National treasure." Elena's voice is soothing and hushed. The woman stiffens for a moment, gives a confused sniff when she begins to speak, but soon relaxes into it. Face gone soft. "When the carnival clock hits nine pm everyone is going to notice. Mob of kids, crowd of confused adults. You'll want to let everyone know how much you love this guy, how much you care. Tell everyone you can, all about him. The best details you know. Can you tell me what's happening at nine?"

"We've got a national treasure visiting," Sarah repeats in a gruff voice. "And I want everyone to know about it."

"Perfect." Elena says with a smile. "Absolutely perfect. Just stay away from him till after nine, ok? We don't want to interrupt his important phone call until it's just the right time."

"Sure." The woman flashes Elena a grin full of teeth. "I can wait."

###

The carnival is bright around Elena. She wanders along the side trails away from the midway for a little while, exploring the carnival's alleyways and dead ends. There's skill that went into the setup of this faire - with lots of attention given to making it seem bigger than it really is. Plenty of places to get lost for a little while.

She drifts separate from the rest of the crowd. All around her humans go about their business, laughing and talking and shouting and running. Elena doesn't bother to pretend that she's the same species anymore, and the people around her seem to know that on some instinctive level. Something in the way she walks or stops or looks at things puts a chill in the air around her, and no one gets too close.

She briefly considers luring someone away - to quell the obnoxious growling in her chest - but then discards the idea. Too little time between now and the big show. And besides, Damon hasn't eaten yet either. She can wait.

The hands on the clock creep closer to nine. Elena looks around for a vantage point, some inconspicuous place where she can watch undisturbed. She spots a blue metal ladder welded to the side of an abandoned looking fright house ride. The lights leading up to it are all dim or out completely and there's no attendant or guests, so there's no one around to notice when she climbs up a story, wraps her arm around a rung, and hangs in her own little circle of dimmer light.

The midway looks deceptively normal at three minutes to the hour. Damon is still in the same spot, oblivious to his surroundings. He isn't talking on the phone anymore, but she can tell that he's still engrossed. He's hunched slightly over with both hands clasped awkwardly in front. Must have switched to having the all text version of the war room argument with his brother.

Elena can tell there's something going on now, a weird wave rippling through the sea of faire-goers. Groups are clumping up on the edges of the midway. There's pushing and pulling and awkward little skirmishes in the dust along the path, but there might as well be a solid wall ten feet around Damon that almost no one will cross.

Then one girl (not even one of the compelled ones, Elena notes with satisfaction), breaks away from the grasping arms of her friends to make her way over to Damon. He glances up and takes her in, probably sizing her up as a potential meal. Even from this distance Elena can see the subtle changes in his body language as he chats her up. The girl cups one hand around his ear and leans in to whisper to him. He pops back when he hears whatever it was, startled and confused.

That's when the dam breaks.

First one, then three, then ten teenagers are rushing Damon. They don't even bother to be polite, they're too excited, too nervous to control themselves. Kids who have no idea what's going on come running too, when they see the crowd gathering. Elena's sure that more than half of them have no idea what's going on, or who they're all gawking at. She makes a mental note to ask around for rumors when she finally climbs down there to pull them all off of him. She can be his hero tonight - maybe he'll finally let it go.

As Elena watches the the carnival goes lopsided, with more and more people, adults included, wandering onto the swarmed midway. A group of teenaged boys on one side start up a completely unintelligible chant - maybe the high school fight song, maybe a popular song, Elena has no idea. The jabber of voices from the throng grows to a roar.

Damon is doing his best to keep them off him, eventually getting himself cornered up against the wall of a tent. From her perch she can see him hollering at them, the usually unflappable Damon replaced by one nervous and overwhelmed. Normally he loves to be the center of attention, but only on his own terms; to be this sudden eye in a teenage love storm has him completely thrown.

Elena glances at the clock again, already edging towards ten past. She hasn't seen Sarah at all, not in the crowd or anywhere along the midway. The thought of the missing woman nags at the back of Elena's mind, souring her amusement at Damon's predicament. She steps a few rungs higher on the ladder, trying to find some glimpse of Sarah in the farther flung parts of the faire. When no clue to her whereabouts can be seen on the grounds, Elena gives up and turns her attention back to the hero of the hour.

An adult pushes through the crowd in front of Damon, but it isn't Sarah. It's a carnival barker in top hat and tails, trying his hand at some crowd control. He's yelling at the kids, just like Damon, but he's doing it conversationally, with jokes and snark and charm. Soon the kids are following his lead, opening up a space for him to pass through right up to the tent wall where Damon is pressed.

Elena sees the top hatted barker saunter up to Damon, taking the time to elaborately shake his hand. He puts an arm along Damon's shoulders, and poses them both for a flash photo. She watches the man lean himself in through the whole thing, never even attempting to pull Damon in any direction. Almost as if he suspects that Damon might be as immovable as a brick wall. Elena quirks her head, suddenly curious about the man's real purpose there next to Damon.

And then she sees the vampire crumble, sees the man in the top hat catch him as he falls. Burley carnival folks in various shades of steampunk attire muscle through the crowd from all directions until Damon is surrounded, held up as he hangs limp.

Elena has no idea what's going on. Her fingers clamp tight to the cold metal bars of the ladder on the ride.

The costumed workers ease the crowd back from the circle they've formed around Damon. Out steps Sarah, who goes to stand at the front of the pack, carrying a bucket in her right hand and a rifle in the other.

"Show's over, kiddies. Time to go home!" Sarah roars at the crowd. All over the carnival, heavy switches are thrown accompanied by creaks and slams, and with each one another pool of light disappears. Sarah raises the rifle above her head and fires off one booming shot. "Carnival's closed now! Time to go home! Our hero needs to get some beauty sleep before the sun comes up."

There's a chill that runs through Elena that has nothing to do with the desert night air. _They know_, she thinks, _they know and they have Damon and who-_

"Fuck." The uncharacteristic curse leaks from her mouth, carried under a slow-released, unnecessary breath.

A shot from Sarah's rifle cracks open the night - all it takes to get the crowd moving. Hysteria reigns as adults drag children towards the darkened parking lot. Teenagers take off in all directions into the desert night. Some of them are dragged physically away by their friends, unwilling to leave behind their only chance at an autograph.

Elena sees Damon's head snap up, sees his arms move feebly against the ring of carnival workers and performers that is growing around him. She watches as they hoist him up in the air like a crowd surfer and carry him away, against the movement of the crowd.

Elena doesn't stop to think. Her grip on the metal of the ladder relaxes and she falls to the ground. She lands gracefully, with no noise or disturbance. Given what's happening down the midway, fleeing faire goers don't give her a second glance when she appears largely from thin air. She pushes through the crowd without much care, occasionally trampling those who won't get out of her way fast enough.

But then she does think. Thinks about what the hell she's going to do when she catches them. There are too many of them for her to fight on her own. Maybe with Damon's help she'd have a chance against them all, but on her own she'll just get them both killed. And there's no question on that front: these people, whatever they are, mean to kill at least Damon.

_Before the sun comes up, _she thinks. _They definitely know what we we are and how to kill us. No way to know what they are. No fast way to find out. No secret weapon, no plan. _

She sifts through what she knows and what she sees bit-by-bit, as fast as she can. Discards every plan as quick as they come. With emotions she'd be in full on panic now - panicked and raging. Instead she is a sea of calm in an ocean of terror. There are no twinges creeping loose from her heart now. She is brutal with her focus.

Sarah must be the reason it all fell apart. She must have never been compelled in the first place - so Elena's compulsion did nothing but provide them all with an open invitation. Elena replays in her head all the clues she missed. The stiffness. The delicate sniff when she started the compulsion. The wicked flash of teeth at the end. All signs that there was no link between her and Sarah, and therefore no compulsion.

Something tickles at her brain about the memory. Something she saw Sarah do.

Of course.

Elena has no chance against them all. But she has everything she needs to destroy their livelihood and homes.

She sweeps to the side of the rapidly emptying midway, towards the walls of the nearest tent - doesn't bother to walk at anything resembling a human pace, just zips along the edges. She stops a second here and a second there, lingering only long enough to pull down the fake gas lamps, pour the oil onto canvas and wood and paper, and then lighting the whole mess up with the flame. She zips around the midway and soon wide swathes of the carnival have joined the growing inferno.

Elena takes off into the darkness through the fire, fighting instinct all the while. There is a deep-seated fear of fire in her now, a gift that came along for the ride when she changed species. But like all things she finds unnecessary, she tamps it down and ignores it and soon enough she's out in the darkness of the empty desert around the faire. She doesn't stop moving, but she does slow, running awkwardly pitched to the side so she can watch events unfold through the spaces between booths and tents.

So she's very aware of the moment when the fire becomes a reality to the people of the carnival.

It might be the sound of it that gets their attention, or it might be the heat or light or smell. Tents start to fall, taking with them long strung pennants and banners, adding more fuel to the fire. The stragglers in the mob notice first and take off screaming. Running to get water and hoses and help. Smoke is billowing off the conflagration, lacing everything it touches with the choking scent of burning plastic on top of burning wood.

Then greater havoc breaks loose. The majority scatter in all directions, moving with purpose. There's a plan for this eventuality and it's obvious that everyone has a role. Sarah is there, still by Damon's side, shouting out the details that flesh out their long understood emergency plan. Only the man in the top hat is still holding him up, kept there by Sarah's direction. Elena can see that he's nervous and tense, can almost feel it across the desert floor how much he wants to be out helping with the rest of the crew.

Elena waits, even as the flames rise and creep. Time slows as she concentrates.

Sarah takes a step, almost involuntarily following along with her booming voice. Then another. Now her back is to Damon and the man in the top hat as she concentrates on directing the fire efforts.

Elena takes what she can get: she runs, pressing herself hard, directly at Damon and the man. He doesn't see her before the impact because there's nothing to see but a blur. She crashes into them both. The man cries out as he falls and Damon slips from his arms.

Elena's on the ground too, for a moment, dazed from using her body as a battering ram. She crawls the inch it takes to get to Damon, wraps her arms around him, and springs up with as much force as she can. Her brain still calculates according to human limitations - she expects Damon to weigh a ton compared to her strength. But the supernatural force that animates her limbs doesn't care about differences in body weights, it just lifts and runs and crushes. Damon is like a rag doll in her arms, limp and flopping and strangely weightless.

So the jump is severely unbalanced, but it gets the job done. They flop several feet away before Sarah and the man in the top hat can do a thing. Elena takes a moment to reorient herself, balancing Damon in her arms so she can run. The rifle in Sarah's hands booms and a shot cracks out - but Elena's already gone.

She takes them in a wide arch through the darkness, with one eye always on the carnival and the fire. Luckily (perhaps the only luck tonight) the lot where they left the car is at the edge closest to the fire, so there's no chance that anyone will dive out to stop them. No pursuit from behind, and no sign of Sarah either.

There's a moment of confusion when she gets to the car door - she doesn't know quite how to juggle Damon and pull at the latch - but it doesn't slow her down for long. She throws Damon the length of the seat; he slams his back into the passenger side door and rests there, still limp and unconscious, legs splayed out almost all the way to the driver's side of the seat. Elena's in the car and positioned to drive before he falls to a stop, but then has to abandon all expediency when she realizes she doesn't have the keys. Floundering around in Damon's pockets yields them up after an increasingly tense couple of minutes. The fire behind starts to settle as the carnival workers finally gain control. She can hear increasing shouts over the lessening din of the blaze. There are likely only precious minutes left before a group splits off to come after them.

Elena leaves the lights off as she cruises slowly through the parking lot, hoping to remain unnoticed. They make it to the edge of the gravel lot seemingly without being noticed, but she's tense throughout, holding her foot so lightly on the pedal and scanning from front to back. She pulls the car out onto the asphalt of the road and turns to fit into the normal lane. Takes a deep, unnecessary breath and guns the engine.

###

"what...the...fuck."

The voice that emerges from Damon is little more than a rasp. Elena glances over at him for the first time in an hour and watches as he raises his head from where it's fallen, chin to chest. His eyes stay closed, but she can tell he's still awake. She hasn't wanted to look at him since they left the carnival grounds. She didn't want to see him lying there across the seat, a crumpled reminder of how badly she's screwed this one up. So instead of dwelling on the past, she's making up for it in the present, dashing full tilt down empty, endless desert roads, with little heed for direction. She just wants to get away without further damage.

"You're awake," she says simply.

"Unfortunately. Unless this is a really vivid nightmare."

"No," she says, frowning, "we're both awake."

"Ok..." he says and slides himself into an upright position on the seat, no longer flat out along it's length. His feet thump heavily as they hit the floor. "Then I'm gonna need some details."

She takes the next few minutes to describe the behavior of the carnival workers to him, in bland and disinterested detail, what she saw and what she suspects. She largely skips anything to do with the beginning of her prank, after the first cursory facts. When she finishes, she waits for him to say anything - but instead he sits silent, eyes still closed, for several minutes. The only sound in the car is low rumble of the road, the occasional gravel under the tires. The moon set a while back and now the night is dark as pitch outside the beam of the headlights.

"My bets on werewolves," he says finally.

"Werewolves. Really."

"Look at the facts," he says, with some strength returning to his voice. "They knew all about what we are, including how to inject me with vervain - so obviously some sort of supernatural-"

"Obviously," she agrees, nodding her head.

"If they were witches we'd have been fucked every which way - way too many of them with too many unknown, witchy powers. Plus they didn't have that sanctimonious bullshit attitude."

She glances at him with a quirked eyebrow. "If there's one thing that Damon Salvatore knows about it's sanctimonious bullshi-"

"No witchy powers in evidence, no witches," he continues without skipping a beat. "That fire thing you pulled would have never worked."

She bites her lip and considers how lucky the whole thing had been, based around such a ramshackle plan. "That's pretty true."

"Now they could be some weird new thing we've never seen before," he says, now in full-on detective mode.

Elena finds it weird how much he loves this sleuthing thing - although she supposes it is a natural addition to his heroic tendencies. Probably a leftover from when Alaric was still alive and keeping him occupied. She shakes her head to clear it when she notices that her thoughts keep drifting away from the conversation. Her brain is fuzzy and it's growing difficult to concentrate on the flow of words from Damon, much less suppress the scratching emptiness in her chest. There's a buzzing noise that underlines everything she hears - when she presses herself to listen she knows that it's just one tiny word over and over: _bloodbloodbloodbloodbloodblo-_

Her teeth clamp down and grind, but Damon is too distracted to notice - still healing from the vervain and engrossed in the puzzle of the carnival folk.

"...took us forever to figure out werewolves in the first place, so it's reasonable to assume there's more out there we don't know. But if they aren't something new and weird, they fit the werewolf profile pretty well. They acted like a pack and followed the orders of a leader, who had some pretty alpha tendencies. They were definitely stronger than normal humans. Makes sense this close to the full moon, they'd have that little bit of extra oomph. Perfect cover for them too - they can live together as a pack and make money on the road. Once a month they can close the whole thing down without having to explain to some boss. They aren't around long enough for a human to notice something weird. And I bet that's how they stayed away from Klaus - when he went hybrid crazy he cleaned out packs all over the place."

He closes his eyes again. Elena waits a moment in silence, calculating the odds that she can steer this conversation to escape the topic somehow unscathed. She opens her mouth to begin a smooth transition from one topic to the next, trying not to sound too desperate as the chorus in her ears continues to drone.

"That sounds...entirely plausible, so-"

"So to sum up," he cuts her off with a voice still gravelly from vervain, "you rescued me from what was likely a full pack of werewolves by setting fire to all their stuff and then bum rushing them. But _before that_ you set those same werewolves up to murder me, plus compelled the attentions of a mob of teenagers with the misguided impression that I was a "TV star or hero or something" - which, frankly, was far worse than the vervain and the werewolves."

"Something like that, yeah." She has the courtesy to pretend to be chagrined, even as hunger threatens to overwhelm her.

"Damon, I-"

"No need to fake an apology. I'm a big boy. I'll survive."

"I'm still hungry."

He rolls his head limply across the headrest of the seat so that he can look her dead in the face. "Ah. Shoulda known it was that. Even a fake apology would be asking too much probably."

She shrugs, but won't turn her head to meet his gaze. "I didn't have the chance to grab a bite."

"And how is that my fault?" he asks.

"Hey, I probably saved us some trouble," she says, in the vague hope that she can still turn this conversation around. "Maybe we would have ended up eating dog for dinner - maybe even vervain-filled wolf, who knows?"

"_That_," he says, pointing vigorously over his shoulder back the way they came, "couldn't even remotely be considered _saving us some trouble_. That was the definition of _trouble_. And I'm pretty sure I still got my share of vervain in the bargain."

"Fine, fine, fine. I got you vervained and I almost got you killed at the hands of an angry mob. Wasn't the first time, probably won't be the last. Doesn't change the fact that I'm starving."

"Then let this be a lesson onto you, baby vampire," he sing-songs in mocking high-church tones, "feed before you fuck with someone. Lucky for you," he says, closing his eyes and sinking back into the seat, "I could use a couple pints myself."

_###_

_A/N: Next week: Ninjas!_


	9. ninjas and cheerleaders

_A/N: Thanks again to everyone leaving the wonderful reviews! You guys are awesome and the encouragement keeps my fingers tapping on the keys._

_This chapter is a little bit different than the past few weeks - a talky chapter where we can stop and catch our breath a little. I may have taken some liberties with the way vampire powers work - but honestly the show has never been internally consistent, so I don't feel that bad._

_I also want to take a quick moment to point you all to the Kindle Worlds story that latbfan has published. It is heartbreaking and poignant and absolutely worth your time! You can find it by searching on Amazon for "Catherine Holloway's Time Stretching Out Towards Forever."_

**/ 09 NINJAS and CHEERLEADERS**

Elena takes a punch to the face like a champ, barely losing her step. She ducks her head as the next blow comes and the ninja's metal-plated arm swings wide. Damon watches as she sweeps her leg along the ground in a circle, knocking down both the ninja in front of her and another running up from behind. They tumble to the ground as she springs up and away. By chance, their heads knock together as they hit the floor, each sending the other unconscious.

Damon is finishing off his own attacker when he hears Elena's cry of warning. His fist flies up and over his opposite shoulder, catching a spiky black gloved hand bearing down on him with a katana. Damon spins, still holding on, breaking the ninja's arm in the process. The man gives a muffled yelp and drops his sword, but stands his ground. He kicks out, trying to break Damon's hold on his wrist, but it's too good and he can't wriggle free. Damon uses the off-balance momentum of the kick to launch his would-be assailant into the nearest set of lockers, adding another layer of dents to the already bent metal. The ninja's head strikes the blunted corner of the box and he falls boneless to the floor.

Before he can even turn, three throwing stars sink into the metal next to Damon's face, but Elena's got him covered. She's already ripping their thrower apart, flinging matte black cloth-covered limbs down the hall. It's a peculiarly bloodless operation, for something so violent. Damon flashes her a look of distaste at the wholly unnecessary mess she's made - so she rolls her eyes and gathers up the larger chunks to add to their growing ninja body pile. Damon heaves his own would-be attackers onto the top and dusts his hands off like some cartoon character. The bodies come up to his waist.

An empty silence falls on the hallway. They've been fighting ninjas up and down this hall for at least an hour, maybe more. A weird little breeze flows through, occasionally rustling the flyers that hang on the bulletin boards along the wall. There's a fuzzy, abandoned-feeling darkness at either end of the hall, the usual state of after hours at a high school. Overhead, one of the soft strips of light flickers, damaged when Damon threw one of their attackers directly up into the air.

Damon surveys the pile of black suited bodies they've piled in the center of the hallway, no longer on guard for more trouble. All around them, lockers are dented from multiple impacts. In places the metal doors are completely missing - ripped off during the fight to serve as impromptu shields and bludgeoning weapons. The contents of one locker are scattered across the floor: chewed pencils, broken-spined paperback novels, and a cheerleader's uniform skirt in burgundy, black, and white. Above the skirt hangs the shredded remains of the similar colored top.

Elena takes advantage of the lull to throw her hair up in a messy ponytail, but she never lets her guard down. Her clothes are well-worn and now torn in places from the fight - comfortable jeans, a faded blue henley, black-and-white converse sneakers. Nothing close to the clothing she's worn since they left home.

"How long are you going to keep this up?" she asks, waving one hand over the stack they've built out of the unconscious and dead.

"What," he says, "you can't deal with a little brawl all the sudden?"

"Unless your little brawl - with ninjas, _in my high school_ - is somehow going to teach me how to do your vision thing, then yeah, I'm going to complain."

Damon looks both versions of her over. One Elena is here, kicking ninja ass next to Timberwolves pennants and fluttering decade dance flyers. The other is lying in his arms, eyes closed and face relaxed, on top of the still tucked-in covers of a chain hotel's lumpy queen sized bed. He can hold them both in his head through years of practice and hard-won skill - the angry girl he can see in front of him and the empty one he can feel on his skin. He holds her close, face nuzzled in her hair.

"Easy there, Gilbert," he says in the dream. "Remember what you promised when I agreed to show you this?"

"But-"

"Ah, ah, ah!" He waves a finger in her face. "_What_ did you promise?"

"To let you teach me however you wanted, without questioning it or getting snooty or thinking I know better even when I don't." The words are bland when she says them, with not even a hint of her previous aggression.

"Good memory," he says and bops her on the end of her nose with his recently waggling finger. She starts back, and brings her hand up involuntarily to rub at the spot that he poked.

"This is ridiculous," she says and then rips a throwing star from where it cut into the metal of a locker. It's apparently her turn to wave something in his face.

"Of course it's ridiculous," he says, moving forward into her space, refusing the implicit threat of the throwing star. "You have to _know_ it's fake at first, otherwise how can you figure out the really good ones? Tell me how you know it's fake."

"Ninjas."

"_Other_ than the ninjas."

"They're kinda a dead giveaway." She brings the throwing star up and lightly presses the tip into his nose.

Damon sighs and steps away, moving to lean against a row of lockers that somehow escaped destruction. "_Humor_ me, Elena."

She chucks the throwing star across the hall into a bulletin board, slicing a timberwolf- embellished flyer in half. She's a crack shot now, with pretty much any ranged weapon. Ric would be proud.

"I'm not wearing the clothes I put on this morning," she says, pointing down at herself. "These aren't even clothes that exist anymore. The real versions are all ashes. This is old-school Elena comfort stuff."

He purses his lips and squints at her for a second, nodding his head a little. Hadn't realized he'd put her in her old clothes, in human Elena clothes. It was all just part of building the scene from memory.

He looks away from her with fake nonchalance, as if checking down the side hallway for any sign of further attackers. A patently ridiculous cover for his thoughts. When he looks back she's dressed the same as the body resting back in the hotel: a layered and lacy sleeveless black dress and bare feet. Her hair collapses down around her face when the elastic holding it back disappears. When the shoes disappear, her feet sink down a half-inch to meet the cold linoleum floor, causing her to gasp and wobble with surprise.

"Not an issue anymore," he says. "What else?"

He watches her takes her time this round, sees her bite back some immediate and no doubt cutting response. She studies the floor while she thinks, the newly released curtain of brown curls falling down along the side of her face. Damon is content to watch both versions of her while he waits, enjoying the peace of it. Little twitchy movements flash across her face as she thinks, bringing the rhythm of her thoughts to the surface. He loves to watch her think, loves to see her working it all out, but he won't let it show on his face. She'd only use it against him.

Damon is starting to think that Elena is more confused about him than he is about her. Why he stays with her, why he follows her and keeps her safe. There's more to her uncertainty than the most simplistic answer - no emotions equals no understanding of love. She's told him over and over about the "real" Damon: impatient and brutal, quick to anger, slow to think things through. And in some ways she's right - he recognizes those descriptions as realistic pieces of his self. But he knows better than her that there is no "real" Damon, no better or worse version of him, separate selves he keeps locked away for just the right purposes. There is just him, in all his layers and faults and experiences and choices. And he knows himself, far better than Elena does. Far better than Elena understands Elena.

And someday - _he has no doubt_, he repeats it like a mantra_ -_ Elena will turn it back on. He intends to be there every step of the way leading up to that day, as an anchor against her unconscious drive towards self-destruction.

And that is why he stays and why he can't explain it to her. Because weighed against every new crazy act - every petty comment she spits and every obnoxious scenario she drags him into - is the hope that his actions will mitigate her future pain. Her guilt is and always will be _her guilt_, he feels no need to fix her - but he will be there to catch her when she falls.

They have all the time in the world. This amounts to just the blink of an eye. He can wait.

Suddenly Elena is zipping around, glancing down the mostly darkened hallways and peeking through the slit windows of the classrooms. Moments later she zips back to stand in front of him, a smile painted across her face.

"This _looks_ like my school...but it's wrong. Everything is sortof...penciled in. The rooms are in the wrong places with the wrong stuff inside. And the posters and flyers on the walls look like they belong, but when you get close you see all the text is just filler and all the pictures repeat. It's a sketch rather than a full painting."

"Excellent," he says, with an easy half smile. "Know why that is?"

She pauses to think. "This is all built from your memory, not mine. And since you don't give a damn how the classrooms are actually situated or what might really be on the posters, everything is just filler. Your experiences here were all cursory at best. Mostly _what can I kill _and _when can I kill it._" There's a flirty quality to her voice and movements, glancing looks and purring tones. She leans slowly into his space.

And he responds in kind, leaning his own face down to come close to hers. "Don't leave out the all important _when do I get my turn dancing with Elena._"

She pulls back and dances away, with a forced barking laugh. "Or _where's Ric keeping his stash _- I bet his classroom's perfect, down to the very last detail_. _Or really, really wrong but with booze in every cabinet. Or maybe it's some kind of shrine you've built for him - a perfect reconstruction of the Grill."

Damon narrows his eyes at her, but says nothing, clearly unwilling to go down that road with her. She waits just long enough to see if he'll change his mind and take the bait, but then shrugs and drops the act.

"Fine, whatever," she says. "You weren't interested in the details of the scenery. Since you're the one building it, you have only your own memories to work with. But if the person you attack doesn't look too close, you've got them right?"

He shakes his head. "It's not that simple."

###

He hadn't really intended to teach her this - the _mind power thing_ as Elena insisted on calling it, probably just to annoy him - or at least not right now, while she's so volatile. Maybe some day, when they both have clearer heads.

They drove the remainder of the night, down through the emptiness of southern Utah and on into Arizona. He let her stop to pickup a pair of college age hitchhikers, but made sure that they both drank only exactly what they needed to limp away quickly. They left both kids alive, forgetful and healing, by the side of the road.

After that they drove without pause (despite clear evidence that Damon needed more blood) until they absolutely needed gas two hours later. Only then did he let either of them drink their fill - draining the life from a late night attendant and a foursome on a road trip also stopped for gas. Damon finished off three of them all on his own - needing to feel whole in case they carnival pack managed to track them. Within ten minutes they'd finished the lot, piled all the bodies in the back of the road trip SUV, and rolled it off a nearby cliff.

(He was vaguely impressed by how quickly it all went down. If there was one thing that switched-off Elena was good for it was efficiency. Even if it was efficiency forced by the need to flee her latest disaster.)

And then it was back to the road with Damon in the driver seat. They doubled back the way they came to confuse the trail. It was just a matter of time before the SUV was discovered - there wasn't time to more thoroughly hide the bodies. Anyone paying attention would understand the details of their deaths, but nothing could be done. All they could do was put time and miles between themselves and the evidence.

On they drove through the long empty hours of the night, crossing into Flagstaff by the time the sun crept over the horizon.

Elena slept half the way, probably more out of boredom than need, with her face pressed to the glass and her mouth half open. Damon was tempted to leave her that way when he parked the car in the bottom of an underground lot, but it would cause more problems than it was worth. He couldn't risk anyone seeing her there and investigating. Plus she'd probably take off somewhere, looking for ever more creative ways to annoy him. Maybe bring the mountains down on their heads or find some way to jump start a long dead volcano. The way things were escalating he wouldn't be surprised.

Instead he scooped her up and carried her inside the hotel. She didn't do more than murmur a little when he set her down on the scratchy fabric of a lobby chair, just long enough to check them in. She looked perfect and peaceful swallowed up in the overstuffed plush of the furniture, brown-and-pink curls strewn over the arm. He ended up carrying her, through the halls and in the elevator, all the way to their room on the sixth floor. She didn't wake even when he laid her down on the rented bed.

There was one final phone call he had to make, just to finalize the details of the plan - and Elena seemed out of it enough to risk her wrath by just making it from the room. Caroline and Stefan were probably fine managing Rebekah's rescue without him - at least for now - but he still wanted to check-in to see how things had progressed since he was abruptly cut-off at the carnival.

It didn't take long to figure out from Stefan that nothing crazy had gone wrong with the plan (_yet_, he reminded himself), so when his brother launched into his latest Elena-needs-to-be-fixed diatribe, Damon ended the call mid-lecture and shut down the phone. The guilt-trip twins have managed this far without his supervision; a few days of radio silence probably wouldn't matter. Having his phone on wasn't worth the trouble it would cause with Elena. He had it hidden from sight by the time she woke up.

The first day in hiding sped by with no real trouble. Damon finished one ancient paperback and started another. Elena mostly stared out the window, taking in the mountains. Sometimes she'd switch on the TV and flip around listlessly before up on it again. Every time she interacted with Damon she was respectful, verging on cordial, and definitely subdued. They never discussed the events of the past few days, but Damon could tell she was turning them over and over in her head. So there was hope, at first, that she had gotten all the recent crazy out of her system.

But as time wore on, it became apparent that Elena hated being caged inside the hotel - despite the need to stay out of sight for the time being. She paced, she whined, she moaned, she threatened.

On the third day he had to stop her from dropping a nearly dead maid in the middle of the hallway, in a lame attempt to force them to flee. As if the choice for Damon between hiding out from a justifiably pissed off werewolf clan and dealing with the consequences of one dead maid wasn't absolutely clear. It ended up not mattering either way - he caught Elena before she could finish the poor woman off. He grabbed Elena by the scruff of her neck and hauled her into the hotel room, before turning back to deal with the maid. Healed her, compelled her, and sent her on her merry way to clean the next room along the hall, no one else in the hotel ever the wiser.

"We can't go on like this," he growled, once the door slammed shut behind him. "I don't know if you've gone suddenly suicidal or stupid or suicidally stupid, but something has to change, Elena."

The look she gave him made his blood run cold. It was empty. Emptier than a mask.

His anger faded away as he sat down on the bed across from the chair where she was curled. For long minutes neither of them spoke. That was when he offered to teach her about vampire dreams and visions.

###

"Fine," Elena says, breaking through his momentary reverie, "explain the complications to me."

"Humans with no protection - no vervain - are wide open. They can't begin to keep you out, so it's easy to open them up and get the details you need to make a perfect illusion."

"So when you gave me that nightmare back when we first met...you pulled all the details from my head, that's why it was so perfect. And felt so real." She says it matter-of-fact, without even the memory of fear coloring her voice.

"Well, that and all the horror movie tropes I threw in to make it worse: dark, creepy house, TV that talked about you directly, looming shadows. Even if the details of every kitchen cabinet and drawer weren't _completely_ right," he flashes her a smile, "you were too busy to find out."

"I mostly wrote it off as a bad dream," she says, trying to deflate his ego. "If you had such easy access to my brain, why wouldn't you just do that all the time?"

"Difficult to maintain without concentration. I had other things to do and people to annoy, I couldn't just give you all my attention."

"And then Stefan gave you your necklace-"

"- and the vervain kept you out of my head from then on. So far it sounds pretty simple."

"Pfft, humans are easy," he says. "It's the vampire half of the equation where things get more complicated."

"We're complicated creatures," she replies.

The ease with which she makes that statement sends sparks scurrying through his chest. There was a time when Elena had nothing but distaste for her vampire existence; now it's just another part of who she is, accepted deep down on her skin. He suspects it's there to stay, emotions off or on. The changes to the core of her are too permanent and deep engrained for guilt and regret to wash away. It's knowledge that makes this past week of idiocy _almost_ worth it.

There's a little more enthusiasm in his lecture as he launches back in. "We have natural defenses against this type of attack, as long as you're well fed and healthy. Keep up a steady diet of human blood and you'll be almost impossible to fool."

"Almost?" Elena asks.

"For a vampire that's really good there will _always_ be loopholes. But your garden variety creature of the night? They'll need you weak before they can get inside that head of yours."

"So the easiest way to protect myself is to feed until I burst - got it. Which is why you've had me starving for the last two days - to break down my natural defenses."

"Yep. Too much fresh blood in your system - between those kids at the gas station and the maid." He doesn't bother to hide his annoyance as he remembers the incident. "Had to soften you up a bit or we'd never be able to get started. As it is, this is a pretty basic dream I've got you caught in. Doesn't hold up to scrutiny - once you know to look."

"Still seems pretty real," she says, stretching out her hands and wiggling her fingers, "regardless how many holes I point out."

"Of course it does. I'm good at what I do," he says with a cocky smile. "The weaker you get, the better the illusion will become. There's this... point of balance between the strength of two minds - yours and your attacker's. Once you fall out of balance things really fall apart. I can overwhelm all your senses - make it _smell_ right, make it _taste_ right. I can use your memories against you, pull in more details from your mind to make everything _perfect_ - until the dream is more real than when you're awake."

"I bet I'd have to be pretty wreaked for that to work, though, right? Like how you made a dream for Rose. I'd have to be dying or something, for you to give me a dream of somewhere you'd never been?" There's nothing petty in her voice as she asks; it sounds like an honest question rather than another attempt to wound. So he does his best not to flinch at the mention of Rose.

"Dying or something, yeah," he says. "And at that point - most of the time at least - it's not worth it to bother with something like this. Might as well just stake you or rip your head off. This isn't something someone will use when you're dying - it's what they'll use when they want to find something out or fuck with you. They'll attack when you're vulnerable but plenty alive, so most of the time they won't get to take details from your head. They'll have to work with what they already know. Use the current environment, play with what's already there - _or_," he throws his hands up in the air, gesturing along the school hallway, "know the victim well enough to believably change the scenery."

She nods at him, a thoughtful expression tracking across her face. "Stefan told me about when he was locked in the tomb with Katherine, how she played with his reality."

"Stef told you about that?" Damon's surprised, and it shows in his voice. Stefan is the "good" brother in many ways, but upfront honesty isn't usually one of them. He wonders what must have happened to trigger _that_ discussion with Elena.

"Yeah," she says with simply, with pasted on disinterest in her voice, "he was in one those moods with just that perfect combination of guilt and regret, so he told me a bunch of stuff that he'd normally never bring up."

The sideways look she gives Damon while she talks makes him file the comment away for later discussion. Stefan's mental escapades with Katherine probably weren't all they talked about. And the way she's dancing around the topic, when normally she'd be displaying it for her own version of amusement, makes him think it has to be good. Later he'll have to remember to send down to the bar for a couple of bottles of Elena's favorite vodka - perfect for prying out secrets.

But for now he lets it go. "Tell me what he told you about it."

Elena thinks for a moment. "Katherine always kept it to their current surroundings - never made it look like somewhere else. They were always in the tomb. Never lasted more than a few minutes. I think he said he was always asleep when it happened, but I might be remembering wrong."

"So in that case," he says, "longterm bunny diet plus no food source plus bitch queen with nothing else to do equals screwing with my saintly brothers head. Easy math. She attacked him in his sleep to make it more difficult to figure out."

"What does it matter if he knew?" she asks.

"If you know you're being tricked you can fight it. There's a particular sensation that- it's like a weird little itch in the back of your head. Do you feel it here yet?"

Crinkles appear across her face as she concentrates. Her eyes squint and her mouth purses. "Maybe...there's...I'm not sure. There might be something that feels a little off."

"I'm willing to bet the longer we stay here, the more you notice, but there isn't exactly a manual for this stuff. Once you know, you can try to break it. Which means that if you're ever on the sending end of things, you'll want to try for scenes that won't be outright rejected, the place where you are right now or familiar settings-"

"-like the school-"

"Right, like the school - but then you have to pay attention to the details." He thinks for a moment, then adds, "Wish fulfillment can be a good method too, if you can't use something recognizable or don't know the details well enough. Give them what they want, and even if their brain knows it can't be true, their emotions will go right along with you."

He doesn't give her the perfect example of this: how Rebekah drained his blood out onto the floor for hours. How it weakened him enough that he saw and felt and heard Elena come and rescue him - and it was real and true and perfect. How he wanted it so badly he ignored all evidence to the contrary and gave Rebekah yet another way to hurt him. A perfect illustration of how to break a man with his own desires. It's a story that Damon doesn't want to tell, not even for Elena. Another reason this whole exercise makes him nervous.

"Did you have a teacher?" she asks suddenly, changing the subject. "I know Katherine wasn't around-"

"Not that she would have bothered even if she had been," he drawls.

"Right. But does that mean you taught yourself all of this on your own, with no help?" His reaction - the tiniest flinch quickly hidden - is enough to set her teeth in it. "I know Stefan never did it - not even when he was drinking the real thing. Or at least he never brought it up and I doubt he'd bothered to hide it. I think it's more likely he never learned how, since he was always either too crazy to care about subtlety or to weak from eating bunnies to manage it. Caroline doesn't seem to know how to do it. If she'd figured that out I would have never heard the end of it. But maybe she's just too young to figure it on her own..."

She trails off for a moment, before continuing with new enthusiasm. "Rose was super old, but I never saw her do anything like that, not when she kidnapped me or ever after that. Trevor too. And the Originals - I've never heard of any of them doing it either-"

He tries to control the twitch of his lips, but it's too late, she's already seen it. "One of them or all of them?" she asks quickly. "Which ones?"

The look she gives him makes him think she's willing to wait all eternity for him to respond, so he gives her the answer she's looking for.

"Rebekah," he says, biting every syllable. She opens her mouth to beg for details, but he cuts her off. "Is that really what you want to know about right now? I thought you wanted to know how this works, not some laundry list of everyone who can do it except for you."

"Fine, point taken," she says. "Doesn't change the fact that I doubt that you taught yourself how to do this. Tell me I'm wrong."

In the real world, Damon reaches over to the bedside table for his glass of emergency bourbon. Somehow he'd known that he'd need it, so he'd left it within easy reach, even with Elena balanced on one arm. Inside her head, he bangs on the locker behind him and it pops open under his fist. Inside is a perfect copy of the boarding house drink cart, complete with crystal decanters. In both places he pours himself a double and takes a long swallow of liquor before speaking again.

Elena raises an eyebrow as she watches this little show. "Why is it so hard for you to talk about this?" she asks. "You seem fine about the abstract, but every time I touch on anything personal you act like it's the end of the world or something."

"Nah, end of the world is easier," he replies, using sarcasm as an automatic defense.

This time she just waits while the silence grows.

"The personal stuff is..." he scrambles to find the right word and fails "...personal. It was a weird time in my life, when I'd just come around to accepting what I'd become."

"A vampire."

He rolls his eyes and continues, "Yes, a _vampire_. Before Sage showed up, I was a model Victorian gentleman who just happened to survive by eating human blood. Afterwards...afterwards I was a vampire."

"So it was Sage who taught you this, along with all the rest?"

"Yes," he says simply.

"And the process was..."

"Personal." There's a note of finality in his voice, a firmness that betrays his discomfort. He hopes Elena will take the hint and let the topic drop.

He couldn't begin to explain why it's so hard to discuss, but there's something that makes him hesitate every time it comes up. Everything with Sage... Learning this particular skill required that he be open to her, vulnerable and naked. And she to him. She taught him to defend against attack and slip through the cracks in others' defenses. Both skills required that they take roundabout turns as victim and aggressor. They knew each other inside and out by the time they were through. No secrets, nothing left hidden - everything was laid bare. That was the price of learning what Sage had to offer.

And Damon isn't completely sure he can do the same for Elena. At least, not as she is right now.

"How long did it take?" Elena asks. She's been watching his face, reading the signs of his unease. Apparently, she's decided to let it go for now, to take up another line of questioning that might get her better answers.

"Off and on, twenty years or so." He takes another sip from his glass and stares down into the remainder. "Getting into human heads is the easy part to practice. Learning the vampire side requires-"

Elena cuts him off, barely listening to his reasoning. "_Twenty_ years?"

"Nah, I'm just teasing you," he says with thick sarcasm, falling back on old defenses. "It'll be a month tops before your baby vamp ass is rooting around inside people's brains. _Of course_ _it took twenty years._ This isn't running fast or jumping high, Elena, this is serious supernatural shit."

"Yeah, but-"

"What's it matter anyway? We have an _eternity_. And even for the time being it's not like we're in a hurry, right? Between your abandoned vampire nursery and the pack of very, _very_ angry werewolves you poked with a sharpened stick, we need to lie low for at least a few more days, if not the entire week. My _car_ needs to stay at the bottom of the hotel garage and _we_ need to stay in this room. And even then, it's an even bet whether or not someone will burn this hotel down around our ears," he yells.

Elena's eyes go wide as she watches him vent. The look on her face finally makes him pause. He wants to shake some sense into her, but instead reaches a hand out and pulls her close, wrapping his fingers around her own. She offers no resistance. Her face empties of all color.

"So maybe," he says, lowering his voice, "_just maybe_, you should calm the fuck down about everything and just listen to me for once. I know you think that having your emotions turned off makes you some kind of super intelligent vampire genius, but it doesn't. Obviously."

He pulls her hand up to his face and presses a chaste kiss there, along the backs of her fingers. Behind him the bodies fade and away, and the scene resets to how it was in the beginning. No more flickering lights, no more demolished lockers. It's just the two of them again, standing in the half-dark hallway of a school that exists only in Elena's head.

"You know what your real problem is?" he asks, running his thumb along the soft ridges of her knuckles. She shakes her head slowly and closes her eyes. "You only want to live _right_ _now_. You want to forget the past and ignore the future. And you _can _do that, and it will even work - for a little while. But you need to understand this: eventually, it will all come crashing back on you. I can _promise_ you that."

She pulls her hand out of his and turns away, but it's not a violent act. The look on her face is confused and tense. If she wasn't switched off he might have called it embarrassment, the way she pulled away - like she feels the need to hide her face.

When she speaks again, it's halting and laced with frustration - like she doesn't know the words she wants to say. "Damon, I... I'm not sorry for everything that's happened. I _can't_ be sorry. I can't regret any of it or feel guilt. It's not even there for me to feel it." Her face jerks up from the floor, and her brown eyes meet his own. Pride creeps back into her words. "So if you're holding your breath for an apology, even a fake one - let it go."

There's more to this. Damon can can read it in the lines of tension that knot in her toes and shoulders, in the way she holds her arms. So he takes another sip of his drink and bides his time, waiting for her to bring him whatever words are eating her up inside.

"But I need to say this too," she says slowly and quietly. Unnecessary breath after unnecessary breath audible as she sorts out her words. She keeps her eyes locked on his, even though he can see how much it costs her. "What I did... in both places - with the ones I turned and the werewolves... they were mistakes. Miscalculations. Poor judgement. Lack of experience. I've learned some things and..." She takes another deep breath, finally unable to keep herself from looking away. He sees her gaze snap to the floor and the next words come out in a stuttering rush. "It won't happen again - I...won't do something like that again."

"Fair enough," he says slowly. He's not sure what to make of this sudden almost-but-not-quite apology. He wants to press her, to see how far she means this to go. "So you'll consider the future before you start shit - but how 'bout the past, Elena?"

"The past is past, Damon," she says reluctantly. "What's the point of dwelling?"

"I used to think that way," he says, eyes growing distant as he considers. "Still do, mostly. Hell, I don't want to remember half of what's happened to me - and you've seen how much I want to dissect it in front of you for these lessons."

He peers down the hall, staring at nothing in particular, but taking in everything. The lockers, the flyers, the banners - even the ceiling tiles. He gathers it all in, all the details that make up the surface of this place. A weird little high school in Virginia, that's managed to entangle his life. Finally the unfaltering weight of Elena's eyes on his face moves him to continue.

"Look," he says, "I'm not asking you to hug a growing dust-covered mountain of souvenirs to your chest like Stefan. You want to periodically burn all your worldly possessions and then walk away like a badass, no complaints from me. It's just stuff, it's all just stuff. More stuff to carry around and clean and store and protect."

He looks her dead in the eyes, drawn back to the present moment by the trail of his thoughts. "But people... You figure out eventually that people are the only things that carry through. Time passes, everything changes, stuff burns, blah blah blah. But the people you know along the way? For better and worse you're stuck with them."

"What's your real point Damon?" she asks. "That I should stop distracting you from whatever crisis is going on back in Virginia? Or that I should actively help you with it? Maybe I'm done with saving the world."

"Nah, I'm talking more big picture. Things back home haven't reached a critical fuck-up - _yet_ - so we have ample time before they need rescuing from whatever mess they get themselves into. Come on, Elena," he says brightly, "tell me you wouldn't love to be the one that saves them all when the plan inevitably falls apart? You swoop in like some badass vampire ninja, able to save the day _because _you embraced your vampire nature. Just imagine the dumb-struck look on Caroline and Stefan's faces. It'll be fucking priceless. Stefan's worry lines will get worry lines. Caroline will give herself an aneurysm, no witch necessary. You'll have proved them both completely and utterly wrong about you."

She starts to giggle halfway through his speech, before falling head-on into an almost-genuine-but-still-not quite laugh that startles them both. And for a moment, the two of them are laughing together, like nothing ever changed.

But of course Damon slips up when he realizes just how close this is to real emotion - real happiness seeping through - and just a glimmer of the hope he keeps tucked away flashes across his face. And of course she notices. Her laugh falls away, changing to a sly, knowing smile. Like that, the mask returns, covering her face. He can see her weighing options to distract - maybe a fight, maybe a fuck. Anything to draw him away from the growing cracks in her switch.

That bluster she devises to hide her growing inner turmoil - all it does is strengthen his resolve. The werewolves, the vampire nest - all of it was just a diversion from her real problem. Emotions - anger, frustration, jealousy, fear - are trickling through the gaps more and more. All this crazy is just a cover, the flailing of a girl desperate to protect herself. It really is just a matter of waiting her out.

For now, he decides to give her what she wants. Or at least a taste of it. Because he wasn't lying all of the thousand or so times he's explained it to her: this is a skill that requires strength and practice and _time_.

"There _is_ something we can try here," he says slowly. "No guarantee it'll work."

Elena's eyes slip sideways and like that, she lets go of her need to distract.

He doesn't give her the chance to change her mind - just jumps right into explaining his idea. "We're in your brain right now. And yes, you're weak as a kitten, but it's still your brain. You might be able to influence what happens here a little - I'm honestly not sure. Later we'll practice breaking it, but for now I'm interested to see what you can do. I want to see if you can change something here."

"But _how_?" she asks.

"Don't get too elaborate with it. Just think, _hard_, about altering what you can see. It's the same as when you compel someone - you have to want it more than anything, believe that it's the truth."

She spins slowly, eyes lingering on the details of the hall. Her gaze fixes on the row of lockers across from them, once broken open and now whole again. There's nothing special about any of them to Damon's eyes. Elena nods a little to herself and closes her eyes.

There's a prickle he can feel, tiny at first, in the back of his mind. It's nothing subtle, just fragile and small. It would take no effort to smooth it over, like a wrinkle in a bed sheet. But instead he lets it to grow, loosens his own by just a fraction. And then it isn't only a thing he can feel, it's a change he can see, as her efforts take shape in the dreamworld of the hall.

The dress she wears melts up her body, thickening in some places, thinning in others, splitting and flattening into tendrils that seek new shapes. There's something biological to the way what should be cloth oozes over her form. The dress convulses like a living thing, sometimes fighting against her control of it, sometimes giving in. Through fits and starts, it warps around her body for several minutes before she finally catches the hang of it - then the fabric smoothes out and stiffens into a replica of the uniform that a few minutes ago spilled from the locker.

Now that she has the hang of it, her changes pick up speed. White sneakers pop into existence with an almost audible crunch. He can feel, almost taste, every effort she makes to change the world now - so he knows there will be pom-poms in her hands before he ever sees them. Her hair takes one final push of will, bursting up from her shoulders to cloud and swirl around her head, before settling into a messy, carefree bun. He can feel her attempt to add color to each of her nails - first a swirl of alternating patterns, and when that doesn't seem to stick a simple burgundy gloss to match the uniform - but it proves too fine a control on top of everything else. She's reached the limits of her current ability.

Elena takes a tentative step, then another less cautious one when her changes hold. She kicks a leg high into the air and crashes her pom-poms together, testing out how permanent everything seems. He lets her celebrate the victory: she's managed more than he thought was possible. There'll be plenty of time later to show her how easy it would be to crush her tenuous hold.

So Damon relaxes: leans back, sips at a fresh drink and watches Elena plow sloppily through a routine - improved in some ways by her vampire strength and speed, but hampered by the fact that it's been years since she was seriously interested in cheerleading. He's content to watch her jump around in the body-hugging uniform - a layer of distraction that he's sure is fully intentional, but doesn't mind at all.

Between one jump and another the space behind Elena fills. Where the hall was recently empty, now there stands at man. He's wearing the remains of an expensive suit, pants and shirt, missing the jacket. His neck is an open, seeping wound. Blood pours out of it in accordance with a heartbeat pulse, but in all other ways the man seems dead. No heartbeat, no breath - and he stands as still as a statue. Even a vampire couldn't be that motionless.

It takes Damon a moment to place him - he knows this man from _somewhere_ but fuck if he can remember where. Must be a victim from the look of him, but no one he can remember eating, not that he really keeps track. But there's still something familiar to this man, something... It hits him all at once: this isn't Damon's guilt made manifest - it's Elena's.

"Cute horror show," he says, pointing past her shoulder at the ghost (because what else is it supposed to be?). "I mean, don't get me wrong, I appreciate the effort, love a good sex-and-death motif - but you're talking to a nightmare king. If you want to really learn that game, I'm more than happy to give you a tour of my best work."

Elena whips around to see what he's pointing at - and immediately stumbles back, tripping over her own feet and falling to the floor, in a clatter of sneaker squeaks and pom-pom white noise. Damon follows her pratfall decent with raised eye brows. Not exactly the response he was anticipating.

"Ah, weren't expecting him, were you?" Damon's voice is schoolyard cruel. "Ooooh, 'lena's got some ghosts plaguing her psyche - she's not the perfect killing machine after all."

"Shut up Damon," she yells.

"There's that old Petrova fire," he says with satisfaction. Elena is having a genuine reaction and making no attempt to cover it up. But he doesn't want to push her too far, too fast - so he switches from snark to comfort. He extends his hand to her, an offer to help her up from the ground. "I wouldn't worry too much about him - natural side effect of the process. Your subconscious is full of all kinds of ooky stuff and until you get better at control, things like that'll pop up all the time. It's normal, don't let it freak you out."

When she doesn't move - doesn't take his hand or hit out at him or even make some snide remark - his smile fades, and he looks again at the man. Nothing more than the residue of the past, an errant memory that hasn't yet faded to the background - absolutely nothing to fear - but clearly it has her spooked.

The ghost has eyes only for Elena, never looking away. Damon squints at the pair of them, sensing that something he can't see or feel is happening between them. And he has to admit, the thing is kinda creepy.

A wide and evil smile flashes across its face - and Elena loses the tiny amount of control she's managed. The cheerleading uniform dissolves back into the black dress; the pom-poms and tennis shoes pop from existence. Her hair tumbles back down to hang around her face.

Only then does the ghost fade away as well, slower than everything else.

###

_A/N: Next week - Vegas!_

_(Next week's chapter might take me a tad bit longer than a week to finish. Real life work and stuff is going to eat up my writing time in the near future. But I don't anticipate making you all wait too too long - probably just an extra couple days.)_


	10. troublemaker

_A/N: __Took a few days longer than I anticipated, but here it is. As always, many thanks to all the kind reviewers who are leaving me their thoughts. You keep me going, no lie._

**/ 10 TROUBLEMAKER**

"Long way down," Elena says.

It's a small thought - said in a voice covered with dust and crackling with disuse - but it means the world to Damon to hear her speak.

"Eh, we'd be fine." Damon replies, following her gaze down along the arching white bowl of the Hoover Dam. He thinks for a moment, second-guessing himself with a wrinkled nose. "Might hurt a bit at first."

He lets her drag him by the hand back towards the commemorative plaza, away from the cliff-side view of the chasm and once mighty Colorado.

They look to the work of a passing glance like nothing more than gorgeous young people: maybe college kids touring the country, maybe gap-year Europeans slouching along. No one in the crowd around them suspects their true nature, so they walk unhindered, wolves among the sheep.

Any one of these people might make a meal, but that's not what they're after right now. Instead they seek the milder pleasures of the view, and the sun and air on their skin. Just being _outside_ is enough to feed them, after the long days spent cooped up in Flagstaff - followed by more hours trapped in the car.

They wend their way through the throng of late afternoon gawkers, connected by their outstretched hands even as she forges ahead to where the memorial statues towering over the plaza. The statues are completely alien and yet look like the only beings that belong here on the plaza - razor-winged angels that scrape proudly at the air. They are creatures built for this place of sky and rock - nothing like the tourists that pulse around their ankles, all firmly bound to the earth.

Elena stares up at them, puzzled by what they mean. Damon just watches her.

He's almost thankful for the werewolves and the vampire nest and all the other insanity that kept them locked up in Flagstaff for a week. Without the restriction that kept them together inside, he'd have never seen the signs for what they were.

Sometimes the switch suppresses too much. Instead of freeing young vampires from their emotions, it robs them of their purpose and personality, leaving them bloodthirsty shells. A relatively rare occurrence, but he's definitely encountered it before - always from a safe distance and never to someone he cared about.

It took too long for him to accept that it might be true - to read what was written so clearly on her face. What he'd taken for lack of guilt and care seems to actually be a lack of _anything - _any want or desire or need. The notion goes far towards explaining her recent craziness - acts of desperation, attempts to fill the growing void - useful to know, but terrifying in its implications.

So now there's a drumbeat in the back of his head, pulsing behind every other thought: the world is truly fucked if this happens to Elena. He'll burn it all to the ground.

He spent the week in the room studying her, looking for all the symptoms that he's so far missed. So now he noticed her fade away whenever she wasn't actively engaged by outside stimuli - training or thirst or sex. Noticed that her eyes were not just cold, but also far too empty, staring out from a void. The more time they spent indoors the more she curled into herself, speaking only as necessary - mostly in the form of questions during dream practice. Before long he was rethinking her earlier reluctance to hide away - less to do with being controlled by Damon (his original guess) and more to do with not knowing how to stay.

It's not hopeless yet.

(-_not hopeless yet not hopeless yet not-)_

He figures there's still one last shred of Elena fighting back, retaliating against her stubborn refusal to switch back on: empty things don't have nightmares - they don't dream or want at all. Elena has one every night now. Maybe some part of her is fighting back.

He doesn't want to alarm her or set her off. Who knows what she'll do if he mentions his suspicions. A reasonable person might take his advice - but their relationship has never been one you could call 'reasonable.' Far more likely she'd try to take his head off or run or get them both staked in some debacle.

So instead he keeps his theories to himself.

He's hoping the detour to the dam after the long hours on the road will spark something in her, as other places strange to her experience have on this trip in the past. Maybe the view will fill her up - or maybe her vicious streak will resurface. He's ready for either outcome, but so far no dice.

"They're supposed to be about reason and strength and the power of science over nature," Damon finally says, gesturing at the statues that have caught her eye. "But most of these people would probably be happier if they were just angels. Easier that way."

Elena acts like she hasn't heard, wandering away from the statues to where a huge bronze plaque is set into the red rock of the cliff wall. It shows a man rising up from stylized waves, hands pressed flat to the sky, crowned by symbols of modern power - lightning bolts and wires. The art deco inscription that arcs behind the man reads: _THEY DIED TO MAKE THE DESERT BLOOM_.

She stares dully at the plaque and then drops her head to the stone mosaic set into the plaza floor.

Damon scans the area around them, grasping for straws. At this point, he'd accept a mountain of aggravating snark, if it meant a break in the silence between them.

"This used to be over there," he says, pointing back over his shoulder to the far side of the dam. He doesn't know why he's telling her any of this - he barely cares, even though he has fond memories of the early days of the dam. Just trying to fill the empty air with something, even if it's awkward facts. He's this close to hoping she'll get aggravated and just hit him. "But that was back when you had to drive across the dam to get through the canyons. Now it's all closed off, so you have to use the bri-"

"Where are we going?" she interrupts, saving him from his lame attempt at tour guide. There's a row of plaques set into the ground at her feet - each one crowded with the symbols of the states that take water from the Colorado. The Nevada marker on the end is captured beneath her toes. She's staring intently at the little shield, looking for something. "Vegas?"

"_Fuck_ _no_," Damon says without thinking, voice a mixture of laughter and venom. "Vegas is the worst. Tacky as hell and everyone tastes like an ashtray. Plus it's crawling with vampire hunters out to prove themselves. City used to have a ton of class back in the day, but now it's a pit."

"_Crawling_ with vampire hunters?" Elena repeats. She turns to look at him, eyes coming up to meet his for the first time in days. He forgets himself and takes an unnecessary breath, all while refusing to let the falling sun silhouetting her face force his eyes into a squint.

"In the late 80's Vegas developed a baby vamp infestation," he explains. "Lots of confused tourists, lonely drunks, suicidal gamblers - easy pickings for the young and dumb just starting out, attractive to those who haven't been able to make it in other cities. That was the beginning, anyway - then things got worse: the babies got desperate for someone to talk to, so they turned themselves some equally clueless friends. Suddenly you've got a city full of hungry, hungry stupid hordes. And wherever vampires start to build up-"

"-You attract vampire hunters," she finishes his thought. She turns from the memorials, and starts to move with more purpose in her step, making her way back towards the concrete staircase that leads to the parking deck.

Damon catches up to her in two long strides. "_Exactly_. And since older, wiser vampires-"

"-like yourself-" Again she interrupts. Sarcasm in her voice now. A beautiful sign of life.

"Sure thing, sweetheart," He says, nodding agreement. "Creatures with any _sense_ avoid the downtown as much as possible - it's practically vampire kindergarten - and absolutely as annoying as it sounds. Far as I know, the casinos on the strip are still controlled by some ancient bastards, but they don't give a rat's ass what happens in the rest of the city. Probably view the hunters as crowd control or something. So it's the perfect setup for vampire hunters at the beginning of their careers - experience without the threat of absolutely instant death. It's like boot camp and Disneyland all rolled up into one neat package."

"Kindergarten-Disneyland-Boot Camp," she says slowly, pausing at the bottom of the grand stone stairs. He can see the wheels turning inside her brain. "Interesting combination."

Damon continues past her, stepping up twice and then turning around to look down on her. "Ric told me once that he flew out for a week once, _loooong_ before he even considered coming near Mystic Falls. Spent the whole time putting down idiots he caught basically feeding in public." He looks down at her and crosses his arms, convinced of his opinion. "Honestly, there are far better places to spend our time."

She walks up the stairs past him, thinking it all through. He falls in behind her, not bothering to catch up until he nearly runs into her at the top. She's turned around to get one final glimpse of the canyon, before it disappears from view behind the walls of the parking deck.

"If not Vegas," she asks quietly, "then where?"

"_Death_ _Valley_," he says slowly, relishing every syllable.

"Death Valley," she repeats carefully, walking again. They pass from too-bright sunshine into cool gloom and turn towards where the car waits, in a far corner of the lot. "Isn't that a little...on the nose?"

"Give it a shot, sweetheart," he coaxes, "I promise you'll love it. Beautiful desert landscapes. A veritable buffet of tasty, healthy, young people just passing through on their way around the world. Classy historic hotel with a fantastic bar right in the middle. What more could you..." he trails off as she looks up, a wide grin plastered across her face, her first in a week.

"Vegas," she says simply.

"_Troublemaker_," he calls her with a lop-sided smirk. If a scuffle or three will shake her up, he's certainly more than happy to put a few people in the ground to make it happen. And honestly, he wouldn't mind a good brawl himself, to work out the tension building in his chest. "Which are we fighting: hunters or vampires?"

She snorts. "Why choose?"

Warmth spreads through his chest and he can't help himself: he steps in front of her, catching her with one outstretched arm as she tries to go past. He spins them both, gently landing her torso against a nearby pylon. His hands reach up of their own volition, cupping her face on either side and then sliding into her hair. There's a little puff of air from her mouth just before their lips meet - a stunned little breath slipping past her control.

There's fire in her mouth, once she recovers from her initial surprise. It sends an electric shock through his whole body, erasing worry from his mind. Her hips rock against him, hitching up the fabric of her silky top just an inch. His hands drop from her hair, magnetic, to scoop up her thighs around his waist. Her mouth slinks from his to nip along his jawline, while her own hands bury themselves in his unruly mop of black hair.

He's weighing options in his head, the pros and cons of various surfaces within easy reach, when he feels her stiffen in his arms. She lets go of her hold on him, hands and hips, and he staggers back, momentarily confused at her change of mood. A solid unexpected shape halts his stumble - a new body in the area, where none was before. When he whips around, he's face to face with a man in the brown security uniform of the dam.

"Evening officer," Damon growls.

"Deck's closed, folks," the guard says. He sounds tired, only barely interested in what he's just interrupted. Just an employee at the end of his shift, who couldn't care less about a pair of handsy kids in the deck. "Need to ask you to take it elsewhere."

"Sure-" Damon starts to say. He reaches a hand out to tug Elena away from the pylon and back to the car, but she's already on the move, closing in behind the guard. Time stretches out as Damon watches events unfold, not a foot from his face. The guard's eyes go wide when her teeth rip into his throat, but he doesn't have a chance to scream. Damon has it handled, holding the man's eyes and whispering soft commands. _Don't scream. Relax. Forget._

A thin trickle of red escapes her mouth, winding its ways down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. The guard's eyes start to roll back into his head as Elena continues to rip at the wound.

" 'Lena," Damon whispers. She's close to the line now, almost to the point of no return.

This floor of the garage is currently empty, but who knows for how long. Damon's less than excited about the prospect of body disposal at a major tourist site, closing time or no. Besides after the events of the past ten minutes, he's got a new priority list in mind for himself - _feed _and_ fuck_, in whatever order works best - and he doesn't want to waste any time on cleanup.

Just when it looks like there'll be no escaping body disposal, Elena's head bucks back, curls exploding around her face. Damon just manages to catch the man, who faints into his arms - still alive but not for long. There's an awkward moment when he has to juggle the guard while tearing open his own wrist, but Elena makes no move to help. Instead she just watches him with her dark eyes, bottom lip disappearing behind her teeth, to scrape away the last streaks of blood.

###

Now Damon has a plan.

If he's going to be forced to stay in Vegas for any length of time, he going to make sure it's worth both their whiles. Basic violence isn't good enough - she needs a situation complex enough to pique her interest and arrest the slow slide into decay.

Elena's all for pressing on immediately, but the plan requires more time. They need to wait, optimally until tomorrow morning, before making any moves in Vegas proper. He has to find them somewhere to pass the time. Neither of them want to check into another anonymous chain hotel - not after a week of staring at industrial painted walls and mass market paintings.

So the roadside motel they stumble across soon after leaving the dam is almost a gift - far from cookie cutter corporate.

The actual building - a flat two stories curled around a dusty parking lot - is surrounded with the rubble of an wild west dream: rusted metal cut-outs of teepees and animals decorate the lawn, next to a playground painted to look like a ghost town. Inside their room they find the same general pattern as all the other cheap motels they've encountered - only this time done up in a riot of rich desert colors: deep turquoise, rose, sandy brown, vivid orange. The overall effect is mesmerizing.

They head out soon after dropping their bags, hunting for quick and easy prey. Perfect luck finds three trusting twenty-somethings taking a spin on the rusted Cowboys-and-Indians merry-go-round. Damon drinks his fill between two of the girls, while Elena snacks on the third. It's all over in ten minutes: kids stumbling back to their room, lightheaded and inexplicably gripped with the idea of spending the rest of the night turning their friendship into an exploratory threesome.

The buzz that develops in the back of Damon's brain confirms his suspicion: those kids were full of pot. It makes him restless and he wants to walk it off, out in the quiet darkness under far too many stars. Elena's uninterested in a walk, so she goes back to the room by herself. When he gets back, sober and thoughtful hours later, he finds her curled up in the Navajo blanket printed chair, already asleep.

He puts them both to bed.

Hours pass. Evening dissolves into deep night.

He's sprawled across the bed, staring at yet another borrowed ceiling. Industrial white despite their best efforts, unnoticed when they checked in and terribly irksome now. Bars of light cut into the room from between too-wide slatted blinds - the endless by-product of a neon hotel sign hung close to their window. The light streaks through the otherwise darkened space in all those strange shades neon seems to take - pink and fuzzy blue and goldenrod.

Damon isn't bothering with sleep at this point - the few hours he got were more than enough. He's more invested in the weight of Elena on his arm and chest, where she's snuggled tight against him, without a stitch of clothing to separate their skin. Fingers press into his ribs according to the rhythm of her dreams, tensing down and then opening again. Sometimes she's leaves bruises behind, but Damon doesn't even flinch. They heal again and again.

It's the nightmare again.

She won't talk about them, not on her own or when he asks. Inquiries are met only with silence or a race to the next distraction - so he's given up trying to even raise the topic. Pushing her on it only makes things worse.

He feels her start awake, eyelashes fluttering against his chest, but he doesn't say a word. Just lays there as she lifts her head, scattered curls tugged by gravity to trickle down his ribs. The vast silence in the room presses at his ears. She sniffs at him delicately, and the answering exhale falls warm over his skin.

Her face never ventures far from the edges of him as she makes her way to his face - dragging her chin and nose and cheek along the curves of his body, from chest to neck. Her breasts brush against him as she climbs, tracing lines across his skin. She shifts her weight and rolls herself on top of him and he feels her breath again, spilling hot across his neck.

And still he doesn't move. Doesn't react. He waits, letting her take what she pleases.

She presses a kiss to his throat, firm and slow, before her lips spread apart to pull his flesh between her teeth. He can feel her sucking at his skin, while all the rest of her limbs grip him close.

For a moment when there's just a two tiny stars of pain - twin pins pricking at his neck where her fangs press - and then she clutches at him, pinning him down to the bed as her teeth razor through his skin. Blood flows thick from the wound, gushing onto the starched sheets of the bed. It spills out past her mouth as she laps at the tear. He lets his head fall to the side when she nudges with her own. It stretches his neck tight and makes the blood flow even faster.

Still there's silence in the room, roaring now - neither of them makes a sound. Who knows what would happen if they did.

Now she sucks at him, drinking his life down in long draughts, pausing now and then to open the wound again and again. Her nails break the skin of his chest as she tightens her grip and little wells of blood form in place. The bite started with its own peculiar gentleness, but now she's forgotten how to be kind.

The truth is he wouldn't have it any other way. This is why he stays, on top of love, on top of caring. He stays because of this perfection - her scent in his mouth, and his blood in her throat. This ever-present fire between them, beyond any words and all emotion - stronger by far than the switch.

And then as suddenly it ends as suddenly as it began. She lets go, without cleaning away what remains, backing off just long enough for the skin close a final time and halt the flow. Then her head falls down and he is buried in the tangle of her hair and the smell of her shampoo - warm vanilla and honey. She is tight in every part, every muscle clinging to him - for strength, for solace, for comfort, he doesn't know.

The blood loss makes him dizzy and it only adds to everything he feels. There's a tingling all over him, where her skin touches his. He's on fire, filled up with need, but still he waits - because control is the only thing he's ever really owned.

He doesn't have long to wait: she strikes at his mouth, pulling his lip between now blunted teeth. He tastes his own blood on her tongue. And like that he gives up on control, wrapping an arm around her waist and rolling her underneath him.

Neither of them sleep again that night.

In the morning, she ignores the dried rust stain that spreads out from the pillow - another color of the desert she's added to the decor - but Damon's eyes flick there again and again until they're both ready to move on.

He leaves a fifty on the dresser for the maid.

###

They stop for gas just down the road.

The brilliance of the desert lit up by the morning sun is almost blinding after the gloom inside the gas station's convenience store. Elena hands are full of cups of coffee, so she has to push awkwardly with her back at the door on the way out. The bell attached to the door clangs wildly when she lets it go, breaking the early morning peace. Damon is across the lot, leaning against the gas pump, fiddling with his phone - but his head snaps up when he hears the clatter.

The sun beats down on her head, warming her air conditioned curls. Her thoughts are dull and slow, despite the cashier blood sloshing around in the center of her. She'd taken it from the middle-aged woman behind the convenience store counter while Damon was busy outside. Not that he's likely to care about her snack - Elena had stuck to the dictionary definition of restraint, and no one was dead or on fire or screaming threats. Zero consequences, everybody wins.

The woman was tasty enough, but still somehow less than what she really needs - the blood fails to reach past the fog that clouds her brain. Hence her coffee back up plan.

Her thoughts are a jumbled mess. She feels both _fine_ and decidedly _not fine_, leaving her with the peculiar sensation of existing as two beings at once: the iron perfection of her body overlaid with the weary fragility of her brain. Physically everything is perfect and nothing has changed - nothing _can _change. Muscles and sinew and bone are at her beck and call, ready to fulfill her every want. But that empty space in her middle, that place where her heart used to be - nothing more than a projection of her mind on her body and yet just as real as anything - is spreading out to the whole of her, hollowing her out.

When she woke up in the darkness, fresh from the ever present nightmare, she was able to distract herself, to comfort herself, in Damon's waiting arms. Much like blood, sex is a powerful diversion, but the effect only lasts in the moment. Any ease that it brought her last night is long gone, chased away by the glare of the morning's already too hot sun.

Before she can avoid the image, it leaps back to mind - the man in the crumpled suit with the gash in his neck. Her own private haunting, who watches her every night become more brittle and more empty, all while asking too many unanswerable questions. It's just the briefest stab behind her eyes, there and gone again in seconds, but it throws her even more off balance.

There's a flash flood through the empty spaces inside her - a crashing wave of _fear-anger-guilt-rage_ that seeks to fill her up and tear her apart. She clamps down tight against it with all the will she has left. Teeth crack and reform in her mouth. Her fists go white from the pressure.

Then the moment passes and Elena is empty again.

She hands Damon his styrofoam coffee cup when she reaches him, despite the incredulous look on his face. She knows he's trying to figure out what the beverage means. You could count on one hand the number of times they've bothered with (non-alcohol) human food since they crossed the Mississippi - so it's an even bet that the coffee means _something_, even if it isn't clear what.

Plus the expression on her face during her return to the car - during that one _momentary_ loss of control - was probably setting off alarm bells in his head. He's gone wary of her again in recent days, a product of being allowed too much time to study her in the hotel. If she isn't careful, he'll go all patient on her again.

"Look, Elena-" Damon starts.

She doesn't give him a chance to finish the thought.

"What's the grand scheme for Vegas?" she asks, pulling back the tab on the lid and blowing a little through the hole to cool her coffee. Her face hangs deliberately down, pretending absolute interest in the cup and its contents - all the better to avoid the concern in his eyes. "Why did we have to wait for daylight?"

"You wanted trouble..." he says slowly, turning his eyes away from her to follow the line of the horizon. "The vampire plus vampire hunter kind of trouble?"

"I _want_ to pick a fight," she says simply, voice thin and cracking. "I _asked_ to pick a fight."

"Ok, ok," he starts, "here's what I figure-"

A noise of aggravation escapes her throat as she rolls her eyes at him over the lid of her drink. She gulps the coffee, ignoring how it burns her throat. The burns heal in a wave just behind the pain, a fraction of a second later. Caffeine trumps pain.

"Does _everything_ have to be some elaborate plan?" she asks. "Can't we just pick a fight? You're like some vampire rube goldberg machine."

"Ah, ah, ah," he says, waggling a finger at her above the lid of his untouched cup. "There are fights," he says, "and then there are _fights_. Sure, we could waltz into town, eat some tourists, attract some attention, and get into an every day brawl. But why settle for that when we have a chance for some real artistry?"

Elena chucks her now empty coffee cup and leans back against the car. "Artistry?" she asks, sarcasm evident. He watches as it arcs from her hand into a metal trash drum by his side.

"Yep," he says, looking down at the styrofoam in his hand. "Ric told me _tons _about the way the hunters operate. They've got a bar in town that's practically a secret clubhouse. All of the locals hang out in there swapping stories and teaching each the newbies how to whittle."

"So what? You want to destroy their bar?" she asks. In spite of herself, she's intrigued about his idea. Major mayhem is a better opportunity for distraction than the simple street fights she'd had in mind.

"Nah, we don't destroy it," he says, savoring the moment, "we _join up_. Just two kindergarten vampire hunters visiting town to find some action. We get the lay of the land, take out a few obnoxious baby vamps... and then when the opportunity presents itself..."

Elena finishes his thought: "We have some fun with the unsuspecting hunters too."

"You in, Gilbert?" He asks, knocking her lightly on the shoulder with his coffee cup for emphasis. She can feel the liquid slosh around inside when it hits her skin. "Ready to put all those skills through a real test?"

Elena glances out into the desert, where the road shoots off in a line toward the horizon. "How do we convince them _we're_ not vampires? They have to be on the lookout for supernaturals infiltrating their bar - otherwise they're too stupid to have survived this long."

Now the smirk widens into a full grin. "And with _that_ thought, we come back to your original question."

"Daylight rings," she says, with now obvious enthusiasm. Maybe it's the coffee, maybe it's the idea - whatever it is, she's starting to feel less like a walking hole in the world and more like herself. "You said they mostly see baby vampires in this town, right? I bet they hardly ever see a daylight ring - even a ton of the older vampires we've met don't have a clue about them. We walk into that bar in the middle of the morning, they'll probably have no clue we're protected."

"_Exactly_," he says, drawing out the word. He glances away, eyes going distant while he takes a moment to consider some new thought - but then shrugs his shoulders dismissively. "And even if they don't buy it, we can still have fun kicking their asses."

###

It's early afternoon by the time they find the bar, a dive tucked away at the end of a narrow side street, on the northern edge of town, far from the lights of both the Strip and Downtown. For all of Damon's bluster about knowing all the details of the hunter bar, it turns out Alaric never really gave him clear directions to the place. They were both well past drunk the last time they discussed it - and there's only so much even a vampire's gifted memory can do against an ocean of bourbon.

It doesn't help that the bar's proprietor seems intent on keeping the lowest profile of any business in the country. No web presence at all, not even a number in an aggregated online directory. They have to stop and ask the locals, who are almost universally annoyed when they hear the question. Apparently this place doesn't have the best reputation with the neighborhood.

Eventually they find the place - a weird little alley between warehouses, dead-ended at the front of the bar. The street is desert bright, washing out the colors of the block letter neon sign that covers the front, but even so Elena can make out every word:

THE BLOODY MARY

"Cute," Damon says and flashes Elena a smile. She looks from his face to the sign and back again, but never gives him more than a shrug.

They make their cautious way down the street towards the bar. It's flooded with sunlight, arranged that way pretty obviously on purpose, between the careful angle of the road, the cutouts knocked in the rooftops to let more light through and the makeshift mirrors stuck up along the walls haphazardly. There's probably never a moment while the sun is in the sky that this alley is in darkness.

Shadows have no chance to grow. The bar is a castle with a moat made of light.

Elena picks out the spotlights in the corners too, angled to light up every inch of concrete when they're on. Otherwise the alleyway is empty, almost scoured clean. No civic improvements or trash receptacles or even litter. Just concrete and asphalt and bricked up windows, all of it baking in the sun.

The door on the front seems perfectly normal, but Elena approaches it with caution anyway. She tugs at the handle, expecting a quick give, but finding it surprisingly heavy and possibly stuck. It gives after a moment, sending up an awful screech when the over-thick reinforced door scrapes against the wall. Security and alarm all in one.

Damon doesn't hesitate to cross inside once she's pulled the door wide enough to allow passage. Elena starts to follow, but what she sees inside gives her pause, so she stands there, awkward on the threshold.

It's hard at first to really understand what's going on in the room, because everything is broken up into small blocks of color and dark. It takes her a moment to process the effect and understand the cause: the ceiling is one large skylight secured with an irregular grid of iron bars. Beams of sunlight pass through at odd angles, creating confusing patterns on the shapes inside.

Once her eyes adjust to the confusion, she makes her way inside, trailing behind Damon towards the bar.

It's only early afternoon, but already there are people scattered around the room, nursing drinks. They're seated at simple wooden tables, unfinished and unstained. Most sit alone, minding their own business: some further illuminated by the glow from laptop screens, others surrounded by sprawled stacks of notebooks and paper.

Damon and Elena's entrance seems to merit an initial once-over from everyone in the room, but no one's eyes linger long once they cross under the skylight.

Behind the ply-wood bar there's a man with his back turned to them, rinsing cheap-looking glasses in a sink. He's dressed in a ripped and faded black trench, that covers him from shoulders to boots. Long black locks of hair hang in his face, obscuring it from view. It's obvious that he notices them, but he doesn't bother to turn around and look - just continues on with his washing.

"Can I help you folks?" the bartender asks, head down. Elena can see that he's lining up the finished clean glasses on a tray at his side. "Have to tell ya up front: probably won't be serving the young lady for another few years."

Damon turns up the charm, flashing a respectful smile at the man's back. "We were told - the _young lady_ and I - that the good people of this establishment might be able to help us with a particular kind of hunt."

"Mind if I ask who it was that did the telling?" Another glass goes into the water with a low-key splash. The bartender's voice maintains its careful neutrality.

"My friend talked this place up," Damon says, raising his voice and talking faster. He's bouncing up onto the balls of his feet, already growing impatient with how the bartender is brushing them off. Elena can hear the agitation creeping into his voice. "He said this bar was the hub for a particular kind of _hunter_ who wanted to operate in Vegas. He specifically said to talk to the owner, someone named Oberlin. That you?"

"Might be," the bartender says simply. "Might not."

Damon rolls his eyes and puts both palms on the splintery bar top. "Fuck, we've been here five minutes and already I'm sick of the cloak and dagger bullshit. I don't know what special handshake or secret code you're looking for pal, but how 'bout this: _Vampires_," he yells, "Vampires vampires vampires vampires vampires. Is that enough to get your attention?"

Elena shifts her weight to the side, glancing back over her shoulder to get a better view of the rest of the bar. She feels suddenly exposed with her back to all those hunter-filled tables, but there's no visible threat. The patrons don't even look up for curiosity's sake.

The bartender says nothing for a moment, just finishes up with the glass already in his hands. He sets it down in line with the others, flips a bar towel over his shoulder, and picks up the tray. In one smooth motion, he's turned and set the tray down between Damon's pressed down palms.

The glasses rattle when the tray thunks down onto the bar.

The man's face is a ruin. One eye is completely missing, the hole covered over with a black patch. There's a boiling mess of scars around the cover, tracks where something got a hold of his skin and ripped it away, taking eye and bone along with it. The damage follows the curve of his skull back into a mess of patchy black hair.

Damon's face splits into a wide grin. "Looks like this is the place."

"Might be the magic words you were looking for were 'please' and 'thank you,' but we can get back to your lack of manners another time. You want to kill vamps, you get my attention - regardless of that mouth you got on you." He says, pulling the bar towel off of his shoulder. "I'm Oberlin and The Bloody Maryis my bar. Now how 'bout you just get to your point, so we can hurry this little conference to its final destination, eh?"

Damon lifts his palms to drum his fingers on the bar. "We _were_ talking about my friend, the one who sent us here. Kinda weird name, so maybe you'll remember it: Alaric Saltzman?"

"Might, might not," he replies, slipping back into non-committal tones. His hands are busy drying the glasses on the tray with his bar towel. "What sortof origin story we talking about?"

"Origin story?" Elena asks. Her voice is soft and distant.

Oberlin glances up from the glass in his hand for a moment, studying her before answering. When he speaks again, his voice has softened a little. "Every hunter's got some story for how they got mixed up in all this. You, me, your 'charming' friend here. So what's the beating heart that got this A-lar-ic going?"

"His wife was turned," Damon says, cutting Elena off, "but it took a while to figure it out. He thought she'd just been killed at first and...well..." He shakes his head. "Let's just say it was downhill from there."

"Alright, pretty standard Reason Number Two right there - death of family member, or members, at the hands of a vampire, with optional family-member-turned-evil trauma on top. Did he have to kill her by chance?"

Oberlin's voice takes on a weird mix of enthusiasm and boredom as he talks - the sound of an old pro who's seen it all before, but somehow can't bring himself to move on. Every word sounds tired and talked to death, the same speech given to hundreds of rookies who have walked through these doors, the vast majority dead and buried.

"Nah," Damon says, flicking a glance at Elena, just to gauge her reaction to the topic. She couldn't care less what he says about it and her face stays blank. "Isobel walked into the sun one day, couldn't handle the life."

"It's not a life, it's an abomination against nature." For all that the content sounds harsh, the words have no emotion behind them, just another fact of life Oberlin's world. "She did your friend there a favor, otherwise he'd be looking at the further option of destroy-your-own-vampire-kin trauma - definitely not a fun one. Fucks ya up good," he says before his eyes shift to Elena. His next words are quiet and restrained. "Apologies, Miss."

"So that's Alaric's story - his Reason Number Two. Remember him at all?"

"Can't say as I do," Oberlin says, shaking his head. "Get a lot of Two's in here, to be honest. Probably the most popular."

"Dare I ask what Number One is?" Damon mocks.

"The first reason that ever existed: holy missions from God, angels, aliens, ghosts of dead relatives, or dead presidents, or long dead heroes, miraculous talking pets, miraculous talking zoo animals, miraculous damn talking plants or the occasional sentient television program." He finishes the last of the glasses while he rattles off the list with precision. It's a form letter, memorized and spit out without thought. "Number One's your basic crazy - the kind that wakes up one day convinced they have to find and kill creatures of the night. Don't usually last long - sanity issues and delusions of invincibility and such - but if they figure out enough of the rules to get really engaged they tend to at least go out with a bang."

The life comes back into his eye at the conclusion of this rant, when he drops the towel on top of the glasses and looks up to give the smile on Damon's face a long, hard stare.

"Given all _that_, you can understand why I've gotta ask what brings you two young folks to our town lookin' for this _particular_ sort of trouble. Not that we'll stop you from whatever madness you decide to get up to, as long as you keep it away from the bar. Suicide by vampire is none of my business. Just like to know what to expect is all."

"Fair enough," Damon says. He wraps an arm around Elena's shoulders, drawing her in close for a sideways squeeze. "This is the lovely Elena, who I suspect more than fulfills your 'Reason Two' category."

"My family is dead." Elena's voice is coated in rust. This is one conversation that requires nothing fake from her, so she's not bothering to pretend. The role of emotionally-traumatized human is well within the wheelhouse of the emotionally-stunted vampire. "Parents, brother, all gone."

Oberlin nods at Elena, respect for the dead evident in his voice, despite his earlier boredom. "Sorry for your loss."

Damon's free hand comes up to rest over his heart, stealing back the center of attention with his overacting. "And since that fateful day, Elena has dedicated her life to destroying vampires wherever they can be found."

"Fine, fine. I'm willin' to bet I know the reason you're standing there next to her," Oberlin says, setting his own hands on the bar and leaning across.

"You're not crazy and you're not grieving." He sucks at his teeth and leans over further so as to give Damon a head-to-toe look, taking in his spotless boots and designer clothes. "You're flippant about the whole thing, cocky in general - there's no real meaning here for you. So I'd peg you at Reason Number Three: the thrill-seeker. One of those assholes who has some chance encounter with a vampire - just dangerous enough and sexy enough to convince just the right sort of moron to make a life of it. Decide they're suddenly the Batman or something, just because they've noticed evil exists in the world." He juts his chin at Damon, disdain obvious in his voice. "And with you in _particular_, I'd say we've got skirt-chaser thrown in the mix, taking advantage of this poor young woman's grief."

Elena speaks again, but there's no more emotion in her voice than before. "I wouldn't quite call him a 'thrill-seeker' - although he's definitely an ass-"

"-matter of perspective-" Damon cuts in. It's clear that Oberlin doesn't like him - which just makes Damon ever more eager to annoy.

"- and I wouldn't call him "the Batman" - cause that's just asking for trouble-"

"-again, really depends on how you look at it- ow," he yelps, when she elbows him in the ribs.

"But whatever you call him," she finishes simply, "he can handle himself when things fall apart. That's what I need to get things done."

Damon rubs at the spot on his chest where she elbowed him, grin deflated down to a smirk. "Look, the lady wants to kill vampires, I want to kill vampires - can we move on from the comic book bullshit now? My friend implied that you knew everything about the undead in this town - we're just looking for a tip on one that's on the younger, fresher side. Something more...fun size?"

Oberlin looks again at Elena, looks her right in the eye. There's something there, in his expression that she can't read - maybe pity, maybe not. "Sure this is what you want? Once you go down this road, there's no going back. The end is never pretty, whatever the triumphs in between." There's concern in his voice.

Elena merely shrugs, unwilling to play pretend just to save Oberlin's emotions. "We're just here for information, if you have it. Otherwise, we'll figure it out on our own."

There's a twitch in Oberlin's cheek, just a momentary narrowing of the lids around his remaining eye. He picks the tray up with both hands and walks it down to one end of the bar, where there's a woman with her head down on the wood. Her head pops up when he drops the glasses loudly next to her ear.

"Give me a hand with these folks, would'ya?" Oberlin asks her over his shoulder, before returning to stand in front of Damon and Elena. The woman takes her time down at her end, hopping down from the bar stool and stretching.

"Can I fix you two some drinks?" Oberlin asks. He sets two shots glasses on the counter in front of them. "On the house - sortof a good luck charm we like to do for new folks in town."

Elena opens her mouth to accept, but before she can get a word out Damon's already cut her off.

"Thanks but no thanks - no offense intended, of course," he says with thick sincerity. "Elena here is underage and I avoid alcohol as a general rule. Bad for the brain, bad for the body - good way to get yourself killed."

"You sure?" Oberlin asks again, already filling the two shot glasses with a dark liquid from a bottle with no label. Elena can smell it from across the bar: cheap and unsubtle whiskey. "Got vervain pre-mixed in every bottle. Got the formula perfected - you won't even taste it." He looks up from the shots and smiles at each in turn. "Absolutely certain it's a no?"

"Afraid so. But I wouldn't worry about us," Damon says through a smile. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a little clear vial filled with amber liquid. "We're just fine."

"Suit yerselves," he says. With one hand he pushes the shots off past Damon, to where the muscular woman is looming over Damon's shoulder. "Joss, can I interest you in a couple of freebies? Just gonna go to waste."

Joss doesn't wait for a further invitation, just reaches past Damon to grab the shots and downs them one after the other.

"What is it, Obe?" she asks, voice scratchy and tone flat. She cuts an odd figure in the bar. Most of the patrons are men on the younger side, while Joss shows her age. Her coffee-colored skin is criss-crossed with lighter scars, visible on any skin not covered by her leather jacket.

"Jocelyn, meet Damon and Elena," Oberlin says, pointing at each in turn." Damon, Elena, meet Jocelyn Hightower. She's an old hand at this business, one of the few hunters to stay full time in Vegas. You came here looking to get up to speed on the current situation - well, Joss is the best one to ask."

"Pleasure to meet you Jocelyn," Damon says warmly. "Or is Joss better?"

Joss' eyes are busy traveling from Damon's boots back up to his face, cataloguing him methodically. There's a hardened frown across her face, that only grows more pronounced once she looks past Damon and makes eye contact with Elena. Her eyes flick to Oberlin, looking for some sign. He nods just slightly, before turning away to fiddle with bottles and barware behind the counter.

"Obe is willing to vouch for you," she says finally, turning back to Damon "which means for the moment I'm able to extend you a certain level of trust. Until I see some results, that level of trust does not extend to conversation on a first name basis. Understand?"

"Crystal clear, ma'am," Elena interjects before Damon can say anything to piss the woman off. She slides a hand behind her ear, pulling back the curls that have slipped into her face.

"Like the lady said," Damon says, following Elena's lead. "_Crystal clear_."

Joss looks down at the bar and starts to toy with one of the empty glasses, rolling it around along its bottom edge on the counter. "On Folsom Street, in Downtown, there's a vampire strip club. It's all fake of course, just a lot of cheap effects and stage makeup. Except today I received a tip that one of the girls is the real deal, preying on idiot tourists and weak-minded fetishists. I was going to take her out myself, but you can have her if you like."

Joss looks up at Elena, as if to gauge her reaction to the offer. And Elena stares back into eyes as empty as her own.

"Thank you," Elena says calmly, "that sounds like an excellent place to start."

###

_A/N: Next Week - Vampire Hunters?_


End file.
